


Eidolic Encounter

by Ezlebe



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Awkward Flirting, Hallucinations, Haunted Houses, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Misunderstandings, traumatic flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-29
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:50:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 46,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ezlebe/pseuds/Ezlebe
Summary: “You believe in ghosts,” Ren repeats, now a firm statement, looking away thoughtfully and reaching up to scratch at something under his beard.“I’m interested in horror, Organa,” Hux says, attempting to clarify without appearing defensive – he could simply explain why, but… He shouldn’t have to do it. “And that house,yourhouse, is allegedly horrific.”Ren nods slowly, mouth curling into a frown, until suddenly an odd sort of determination gleams in his eyes.“Do you want to see?”“What?”“The ghosts,” Ren says simply, raising his eyebrows. “Or the house. Both. Whatever.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> And so I finally publish a fic I started in 2017 for Luo, in June oddly enough, which started out as sort of an AU for various podcasts. Hopefully, it doesn't suffer for containing that particular subplot, but I really didn't want to cut it out.

A white screen; jagged, shifting lines. The echoing swell behind a startled shout. Rumble… No, _scrape_. But sluggish and quiet, far off into an indeterminable distance. Stop. Conversation with a desperate undertone; a feminine voice, angry and frustrated, and a masculine one – uncertain. A hint of an accent in a gravelly drawl. Stop.

Drag the line back; review.  

“You listened to it, right?” Phasma asks, ungently breaking the peace with a boorish tone that travels easily through headphones, signaling her through for the evening. “Knight Terrors?”

Hux shrugs tightly, dragging down the levels on the back track; he listens, then shifts them downward again with a tense frown. He isn’t sure if this particular segment is eerier when the speaker is slowly drowned out by ambient music, or to have said music disappear completely.

“So. You know what I’m going to say?”

“It’s a short story from Reddit,” Hux mutters, exhaling through his nose and struggling to loosen his jaw before it can tense up into spasms. He had already been losing the mood, but now that Phasma is going on _talking?_ It’s well gone. He doesn’t know why she couldn’t have just left as usual.

Phasma makes it worse with a piercing, artificial laugh, likely bothered by his attempts at ignoring her; she should expect it by now. “Seriously? The secondary character was a ginger, ghost-chasing journalist. Even the comments caught that. It’s weird.”

“Fine, I’ll acknowledge it could be a fan,” Hux says, looking up from the sound board and letting his hands drop from the sliders. He reaches up to pull his headphones from his ears, dropping the set next to his knees and reaching up to rub across his brow with his other hand. “We’ve gotten a lot of listeners after the adverts.”

“The fans don’t know what you look like, or your _name_ ,” Phasma says, her voice turning uncharacteristically strident for just the slightest moment. She shakes her head, gesturing vaguely to the computer on Hux’s lap. “Not to mention it was by your preferred writer.”

“Preferred?” Hux repeats in disbelief, pushing away from his laptop. He crosses his arms and settles back against the wall, shaking his head. “I barely even keep up with it – you’re the one with the obsession.”

Phasma stares for a short moment, then leans forward into her chair, eyes going narrow and judgmental. “Are you seriously going to sit there and lie to me? Just admit you’ve spoken to him.”

A familiar crack of a textbook against a wall saves Hux from having to repeat himself.

“That…” Hux closes his eyes for a short moment, listening to the continuing bangs and clunks in the neighboring room. “ _Every_ day.”

“He is quite regular, isn’t he?” Phasma muses, conversation forgotten as she sends a quirked brow to the wall, then abruptly turns her smirk toward Hux with a sharper edge. “At this point, he’s the alarm to escape this madness.”

“That doesn’t mean he has free rein,” Hux says, snapping his eyes sideways when he hears a quieter thunk of a bedframe against the wall, as an oversize brat jumps into it. “He’s not the only bastard in the building.”

“Definitely a couple of you,” Phasma says, rolling her eyes as she stacks her notebooks on top of her tablet. “I’ll speak to you tomorrow about the rewrite.”

“It’s not changing,” Hux says, hardening his voice and looking back down to the rows and rows of sound files; a nauseous, bleak feeling grows at the pit of his stomach. “We’ve already recorded it.”

“Tomorrow,” Phasma repeats, the door shutting behind her with a click of the latch against the jamb.

The music starts up about thirty seconds later, predictable like clockwork, and Hux slumps sideways onto his bunk as he glances toward the ceiling. He’d expected to deal with frat boys and sororities when he moved to America for university, not sullen twats who listen to loud music and throw books into walls – he could have experienced _that_ at any of the council flats he was offered after emancipation. He reaches up and smacks at the wall hard, waiting as he listens to a few more seconds of dull, thumping beats, then hits it again twice more. The answering bangs are louder than his own somehow, even from the other side of the wall, and if he can’t help but smirk a little at one of the old cracks crawling across the ceiling? It’s fine; no one can see him.

He sits up after that first discordant song fades into another, looking down across the notes, edits, and proposed transition points for his podcast. The show did okay at the first series, more experimental than anything – to prove he could do it – and now he’s planning with Phasma to do twelve episodes, rather than six, from this point forward, but… He still feels like the analytics must have been somehow exaggerating.

And the Reddit horror story.

Phasma wasn’t wrong that it was a smidgen uncanny, enough that, after listening to it, Hux had been forced to pause it and read the Reddit version just to make sure he wasn’t suffering some lucid dream. It wasn’t a direct lift from his podcast, at least nothing close to outright infringement. The ending was entirely wrong and the characters fairly different, but it…

It was just a fan. The fact said fan was one of the better writer/narrators for the pretentiously named, sometimes outright awful, Knight Terrors podcast is just a consequence of the rising popularity.

Probably. He doesn’t think he’s famous enough to have a stalker, and his information isn’t even on the podcast website.

It _must_ simply be a coincidence that, no matter what Phasma might say, this particular story had been about the heartsick protagonist retelling the experiences of their skinny ginger paramour, Armin, who was tragically put in a coma by some terrible spook on a journalistic adventure. It was _not,_ no matter what Hux’s idle nightmares might believe _,_ a harbinger of doom for a skinny ginger co-ed, Armitage, at the hands of the owner of a pleasant tenor’d voice that Hux likes to pretend is an attractive, charismatic fellow at the middle of his thirties with a published book and a lovely house on a river.

The fantasy image has altered some after listening; perhaps, it is now a moldy basement flat instead of a house, but he still wouldn’t say no to a private meeting if he got an email. He might bring mace, but he wouldn’t say no.

Hux startles out of the musing when a heavy thunk sounds just next to his ear, and he hastily reaches out to catch his MIDI controller from falling off his knees. He clutches it in one hand, turning at the waist, then smacks at the wall himself twice, because what the hell? They greet each other, and that is _it_.

The music stops just seconds later, its absence more staggering that the sound, and Hux feels his eyes widen when a pair of knocks sound at his door. He stands slowly, setting the podcast kit on his crooked bookshelf, and reaches for the door handle with a sense of foreboding.

Ren Organa stands on the other side, hand still raised in a loose fist, and Hux forces his eyes upward as he tries to ignore the, mostly baseless, fear of really getting hit. He’s never actually _seen_ Ren violent against a living thing in the two years they’ve been sequestered beside each other, unless that instance he shoved Dameron into the street counts, but either way, his impulse control could barely be called hair trigger.

“What?” Hux snaps, keeping one hand on the door edge.

Ren stares for an off-putting few seconds, ever sharp, then actually looks away when he begins to speak, dropping his hand and studying some crack in the door jamb. “I was… I’m going to make a run to McDonalds, or uh, that vegan place. Maybe. Or a diner.”

Hux watches one of Ren’s twitching hands reach up again to shove an errant curl behind an ear. “Which one, then?”

Ren goes silent a few seconds more, then takes a deep breath, looking up and catching Hux’s eyes. “Whichever one. You want.”

“Oh,” Hux intones, his startled mind now darting back and forth between the sharp, unfounded flare of heat at the back of his neck and exasperation that Ren has waited until almost midnight to go and get more food. His eventual response is more reflex than anything, almost another shock as he hears his own voice. “Ukrainian diner?”

“Yeah, sure,” Ren mutters, looking down to his feet, only to suffer a visibly perplexed look flashing across his face.

“What?” Hux asks, already backing up and shoving on his shoes before the churning thoughts at the back of his mind have him telling Ren off. They’re sort of friends, even if they’ve hardly associated outside jeering at school functions, and generally communicate through the wall between their flats. “Were you quite set on McDonalds?”

“No,” Ren says, clearing his throat and looking back up. “Ukrainian. Good.”

Hux takes a peek back at his pile of potential catastrophe, feeling nausea resurface and prompting him into stepping forward to shove Ren out of the way. He’s realized his reason for this split-second agreement to go with Ren, at least – procrastination. The only comfort is that Ren is being just as awkward, stiff and making expressions into the middle-distance like he’d fully expected Hux to shut the door in his face.

The night air is cool and full of the usual measure of off-putting city smells, lights illuminating the darkened streets that are no less full for the hour. Hux glances sideways after a few awkward, silent minutes of walking, dragging his eyes quick across Ren’s profile for a short, indulgent moment. He inadvertently catches Ren shoving hands into his pockets and hunching over, looking furtively into an alleyway like something might come out and bite him.

“What?” Hux asks, tutting and glancing down the same alley; it’s nearly empty save a bin. “Deal go bad?”

Ren scoffs under his breath, now glancing sideways in Hux’s direction. “No,”

“Scared of the dark, then,” Hux says, lifting his chin in a nod and looking forward, mostly to hide the smirk at his mouth.

Ren mutters something rude, if mostly unintelligible, under his breath, and exhales what might be a laugh. He’s quiet for another few seconds as they cross a street, then clears his throat. “I’ve actually – I listen to this horror podcast. A lady gets eaten by shadow monster in an alley in one of the stories, like right here in the East Village.”

“Here?” Hux says, after a few seconds of awkward silence and hoping his voice doesn’t sound too hollow. He tries to remember if he’d stolen that particular monster of the week, but someone definitely would’ve commented on it, meaning Ren is very likely talking about _his_ horror podcast.

“I’ve listened to it a few times, actually,” Ren says, giving a low hum, and just barely knocking against Hux’s shoulder as they walk across another street. “But it still manages to be creepy.”

Hux tries and fails to ignore the heat spreading up his ears. “I’m sure.”

“It is,” Ren says, his voice suddenly invigorated, breaking loud enough in the street that Hux swears he sees a pair of drunks stumble hastily over to the other sidewalks just to get away from him. _Them_. “The whole thing is about a journalist in the city who writes about weird stuff. like haunted houses and freak deaths. Even unexplained CCTV.”

“Paranormal investigations,” Hux mutters, because he can hardly help himself – it's in the _intro_. 

“Exactly,” Ren says, clearly not paying any mind to the tone. “It’s a serialized thing so far, but a new season is coming out, and I think – I shouldn’t spoil it.”

“It’s fine,” Hux says, feeling an entirely unfamiliar sort of humor just at the idea. He does often wonder if he would even enjoy his work, had he listened to it rather than wrote it.

Ren shakes his head, oddly unyielding, “You could listen to it in like a couple hours.”

“I really don’t – _Ren_ ,” Hux says, glancing over to see Ren look back with a tight grimace across his face, then trying not to feel guilt for it. “Just talk.”

Ren seems startled, remaining quiet until Hux prompts further with a gesture upward, then he gives a short shake of his head and looks back forward, “I guess, uh, I think they’re connected. The different cases – maybe not all of them, but a few of them. The protagonist has this issue with an editor who keeps pushing back? So the editor might be part of it.”

Hux nods down at the sidewalk. “A hidden plot.”

It’s a good direction to go; in fact, so much so it might be exactly what Hux is resistant to rewrite now, despite Phasma’s insistence. They could _theoretically_ re-record the last half, or even just the last quarter, give the season finale a proper climax – integrate a catch for the next season, as Phasma keeps saying. Hux just isn’t sure how long he’d like to do this, or if he’ll even have the time; he’ll be graduating soon, moving on to more intense schooling.

“An entire conspiracy group or just one person?” Hux asks, because Ren is, as Hux knows after hearing a very specific rant on the uselessness of some off-Broadway playhouse (and very definitely to his mother), a dramatic writing major, so his input might be only the smallest bit worthwhile.

“It would open up more seasons if it were a tiered organization,” Ren says, reaching around Hux for the door to the café, the bare inside of his forearm brushing warm against the outside of Hux’s arm. “Like Catholics, you know? But not, because that would be fucking boring.”

“Inflammatory, as well,” Hux says, glancing across the sign directing them to seat themselves. He puts up with the odd impasse Ren stands in for a few seconds, then steps past him for a small table by the window.

“But mostly boring,” Ren says, following at Hux's heels and proceeding to even linger until Hux chooses his own seat. “The villains are always Catholic, or Jewish, when it’s really fucking WASPs people should worry about.”

“Very self-aware of you,” Hux says dryly, glancing up as he catches a server walking toward them with a notepad in hand.

Ren looks backward in the same direction, giving a stilted shrug as he responds in a low voice. “I don’t think I’m even allowed in that club after my grandmother married a homicidal Oliver Twist.”

The server is friendly despite the late hour, taking Hux’s stiff order for pierogi, then suffering Ren’s myriad questions about blintz toppings that even has Hux trying to sink into the floor. He had thought it was ill-advised flirting at first, who cares about blueberries versus huckleberries, but then Ren had stared at his menu for another thirty seconds before asking for raspberry, so maybe he’s just naturally that agonizingly _difficult_.

“I wasn’t serious,” Hux says, clearing his throat and trying to get rid of the lingering urge to kick Ren in the shins. “About the WASP thing. But how colorful.”

“Yeah, I guess.” Ren looks up to give Hux an odd, twisting look, mouth curling in on itself for a few seconds. He takes a deep breath, “You know my biological grandparents were Padme Naberrie and Anakin Skywalker, right?”

Hux tilts his head, not quite understanding why he knows those names, only to feel his expression fall in realization while he carefully diverts his eyes to the window. He finds himself physically biting back the eight hundred or so invasive questions rushing up the back of his throat. “Oh.”

“I thought everyone knew,” Ren says, his voice dropping low, shifting his legs under the table and scraping his boot against the tile. He takes a short breath, “A journalist confronted my mom about it in her campaign a few years ago. But you’re British, I guess.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s it,” Hux mutters, although that might very well be the reason. He jumps slightly when a foreign knee bumps into his, only to disappear again as Ren keeps squirming; he is a little big for the table.

A distinctly awkward mood forms quickly, as Hux tries to ignore the mortification threatening to overtake him. It isn’t exactly a rare feeling, but it’s not often he is so genuinely ignorant, like he’s gone on and failed an exam despite having had well enough time to prepare. A _single_ internet search on Ren would have… Although, that would probably have been weird to do, too.

“I own the house now.”

Hux finds himself looking back with a start, catching Ren’s eyes. “Excuse me?”

“The one everything happened in - I got it after the story broke and I found out,” Ren explains, gaze darting toward the window in the same moment he takes a deep breath. “It’s just out in the Hamptons.”

Hux nods slowly, because he does know about that detail, as he’s spent literal hours on a very extensive study on the Amidala Manor to put something rather like it in the main plot of the third season. The house is as famous as the murder, purported to be haunted, if only with wishful thinking, as it has supposedly been entirely empty since the event. “Inheritance?”

“Yeah,” Ren says, his posture relaxing by some measure: shoulders falling, hands stretching flat across the tabletop, and a quirk appearing at the corner of his mouth. “My cousin didn’t even try to fight for it when the lawyers showed up, after like, everyone found out, but I guess she’s only a kid.”

“You’re barely twenty-three,” Hux guesses, fairly sure they’re around the same age, though Ren might pass for younger. He glances over reflexively as the server appears almost from thin air, hastily shifting his fork over as plates are put down.

“So?” Ren says, somewhere halfway between mocking and defensive, leaning forward to grab his own plate of blintz to pull into his chest. “That’s old enough to have a house.”

Hux barely tries to hide rolling his eyes, tipping up offered sauces and trying not to think about the house that _he’s_ likely to inherit at some point. He thinks he might demolish it, or burn everything in the lot to scorched earth; he definitely won’t be defending his ownership of it like Ren.

“She got the townhouse,” Ren mutters, cutting into his pastry with a heavy hand and a petulant sigh. “Actually.”

Hux hums, having very little idea what that might mean – he assumes said townhouse must be in the city?

“But the manor is worth more,” Ren says firmly, looking up with a pair of raised eyebrows and a small smirk, though it’s too stiff to be convincing enough of his satisfaction on the deal. The way he says it sounds almost like something he was told to think. “And outside the city.”

“No noise complaints,” Hux adds, recalling the few he put in, though he’s gotten his own share of them since inadvertently starting the wall ritual.

“Maybe I’ll give you one of the rooms, there’s like seven of them,” Ren says, cutting into his pastry, then tipping his head with some afterthought, “And a pool house.”

“But who will I complain to?” Hux asks, taking a bite of a pierogi to smother the pull of a smirk he can feel at the corner of his mouth.

“I don’t know,” Ren mutters, exhaling with a thoroughly exaggerated sigh of vexation. He glances up over his fork in the next moment, his eyes glowing amber against the lighting. “You’ll find someone. A _bird_.”

The silence that falls over the table now, as they eat, is far more comfortable than the last. Hux finds himself brainstorming how to add a shady organization into his current timeline, shift it into something tenuous but not trite, while Ren frowns at something on his phone. It’s actually outright pleasant, and Hux barely feels that little pull to fill the quiet, to prove he’s not disregarding… Well, maybe that’s because it isn’t really anything like a _date_. It probably feels like he can do what he wants because it _is_ something Ren and he already do, if usually with a wall between them.

“So this house,” Hux starts, trying to keep that mood of this being so _normal_ at the forefront of his mind, glancing up to catch Ren’s eyes and surprised somewhat to find him already looking. “Is it really haunted?”

Ren blinks too many times for comfort, his expression going slack once he starts to outright stare; his fork falls with a piercing clink against porcelain. “You believe in ghosts?”

The words are accusatory despite the befuddled tone, and Hux shrugs with a quick look down, dropping the napkin to his empty plate. He’s not sure how he could’ve asked the question with more skepticism, only knows that he should have done. “I’ve heard things.”

“ _You_ believe in ghosts,” Ren repeats, now a firm statement, looking away thoughtfully and reaching up to scratch at something under his beard.  

“I’m interested in horror, Organa,” Hux says, attempting to clarify without appearing defensive – he could simply explain why, but… He shouldn’t have to do it. “And that house, your house, is allegedly horrific.”

Ren nods slowly, mouth curling into a frown, until he abruptly looks up with an odd sort of determination gleaming in his eyes. He leans forward over his plate, speaking voice low, “Do you want to see?”

“What?”

“The ghosts,” Ren says simply, raising his eyebrows. “Or the house. Both. Whatever.”

Hux stares for a few moments, trying to convince himself he’s heard wrong, but the words determinedly ring in his ears. It is a chance of a lifetime, stepping foot in a purportedly very haunted manor that is completely unspoiled by screechy morons with EMF readers and night vision cameras. He’d have firsthand footage, firsthand _experience_ ; he could build a proper homage without depending on decades-old debutante ball photos and redacted crime scene reports.

“ _Yes_ ,” he forces through his teeth, hoping his genuine excitement is properly bound at the back of his mind. He doesn’t need Ren thinking it’s anything to do with him, despite recent compliments to Hux’s work, or… Well, his past habits of walking around the halls half-naked, not to mention his possession of the sort of awful personality that Hux delights in his private moments thinking about fucking out of him.

Or, not _out_ of, perhaps more into a quiet stupor. It would hardly be any fun if he only got to do it once.

Alright, the fact this is Ren Organa has some to do with it. If it were... _Thannison_ speaking, then Hux would probably politely refuse out of awkwardness, not be feeling latent guilt at thinking about the thrill it could be getting close enough to touch him in the master suite of a multimillion-dollar haunted mansion under the watchful ghosts of his dead grandparents.

Or grandparent, depending on one’s belief regarding conspiracy.

Either way, as long as Hux never says any of that aloud, he should be able to get through this fine.

“What are you doing the weekend before Halloween?” Ren asks, with a small, tightly restrained curl at the corner of his lips; it makes him look some mix between conniving and unnerved.

Hux slowly raises an eyebrow, ignoring the mounting voices in the back of his head going on about exams and podcast season premiere dates. He shrugs after another moment, giving in to the loudest one; the one that just _wants._ “Nothing?”

“Cool.”

* * *

 Hux calls Phasma at the very moment he gets back in, because he’s apparently fourteen and living in an eighties movie. He even keeps his voice low as he hears Ren shuffling next door, and ignores the ludicrous urge to crawl under his desk when Phasma picks up and greets him far too loud for his urgent need for subtlety.

“Are you seriously _calling_ me?” Phasma says, a quiet thrashing peaking in the background of the call, then slowly fading as she presumably turns the music down. “Are you dying?”

“I might have already,” Hux whispers, curling over his lap and pressing the heel of his hand to his forehead. “You know Ren Organa?”

Phasma seems to take the question at face value. “I know you know him.”

“I do, yes,” Hux says, closing his eyes and exhaling hard through his nose. “Uh, I may have done… something.”

“Did you fuck him?”

“No!” Hux peeks his eyes open to glare onto the floor, feeling like she’s somehow caught onto his thoughts from earlier. “I don’t just _fuck_ people, Phasma.”

Phasma is quiet for another few moments, then sighs a wash of static into the receiver. “You called me for this?”

“I’ve agreed to go away for a weekend with him,” Hux says, forcing himself to confront it aloud, then realizing belated that it's probably why he called her at all – to confirm with someone third party that it will actually happen. “To see his haunted house.”

“Excuse me?” Phasma demands, her voice low and steady now with predictable skepticism, and maybe a little something he can’t quite recognize. 

“As you know, I’m featuring some version of the Amidala Manor in the next season, and he’s offered to give me something of a tour,” Hux says, not quite sure why he’s going on to explain that detail, feeling words bubble up as excuses from his chest. “He’s apparently… closely _related_ to the Naberrie family.”

“Obviously?” Phasma says, disappointingly unmoved and voice lilting as if she expects something more to go on.

Hux rolls his eyes upward, exhaling through his nose. “You knew?”

“ _Everyone_ knows,” Phasma says, a low thunk on the other end of the speaking sounding like she’s just put something down – likely a glass. “The only reason everyone isn’t up on his cock is… _He’s_ kind of a cock. And not in the typical middle class way.”

Hux finds himself oddly offended, and well enough aware why that he doesn’t want Phasma to catch on to it. “Either way, I’ll be gone just before Halloween. I thought you should know.”

“We’re supposed to drop the podcast _on_ Halloween,” Phasma says, with that unrecognizable tone again; it’s not quite annoyed, but nor is it anywhere even near the apathy Hux had expected from her. “Are you really telling me you’re not going to nitpick that entire time?”

“I’ll do it beforehand,” Hux says, now a little suspicious why she _isn’t_ more thankful – she absolutely loathes his attitude before episodes go out.

A peculiar quiet descends over the line, enough that Hux thinks he should just hang up. He does have an exam scheduled for tomorrow, so he should study some and sleep, though it’s likely futile as he’ll end up working more on the podcast than his actual degree for the next two months.

Phasma gives a tut into the receiver, clearing her throat. “You know he could hurt you, right?”

“ _What?_ ” Hux says, feeling the threat of an uncomfortable laugh at the back of his throat, but determinedly swallowing it to instead glare at a poster. He doesn’t think he feels _that_ seriously about Ren, let alone enough to discuss it with Phasma. Or himself.

“I’ve heard he can be… rather unstable,” Phasma continues, swinging an abrupt left out of what Hux has assumed she meant, and with her voice level as if she really thinks she’s being sensible. “Violently.”

Hux finds himself speechless for a few moments, unsure how to respond to this evident confession of Phasma’s that she heeds rumor as truth. He takes a short breath, “I wasn’t aware you felt that way.”

“It’s not – ” Phasma has the gall to actually scoff aloud, moving in some manner than forces a chafing sound in the receiver. “I don’t mean it like _that_. His grandfather killed his wife, you know, and there’s evidence he inherited some kind of temper along with everything else.”

Hux swallows tightly, feeling his back molars grind with the held pressure to snarl something back at her about the fallacies of genetic assumption. It isn’t as if she knows who _he_ really is, or the sins of his own history; she’s just being a literal shithead.

“I’ve already seen him angry – multiple times, actually,” Hux says, all-too-aware of how sharp his voice sounds, near to cracking, though he could hardly care for her noticing at this point. “And the only fatality so far is a cheap drying rack.”

Phasma falls silent for a moment, in the sort of manner that has her eye-roll practically audible. “ _You_ sound angry.”

“I am,” Hux admits shortly, dropping the phone from his ear and pressing the red icon before he can hear more, then ignoring the small vibration a moment later from a text.

He takes a deep breath, staring up at the ceiling for a few seconds, then shakes his head and sits up on the bed. He looks over toward his laptop, his mixer, and stands completely; he may as well work – he’s not going to be able to sleep with every next thought prompting him to dig nails into his palms.

* * *

The row with Phasma doesn’t particularly last long, especially as the next day she seems to have forgotten it happened at all. He’s not sure if it’s an act, though he knows it probably is, but he begrudgingly acts the same if just for the sake of the podcast. He needs help with rerecording the last few episodes, which he knows she takes as a victory, and he nearly tells her that he only backed down because of Ren’s blind input – he won’t, though, he hardly needs to bring _that_ back up.

The remaining weeks leading to Halloween pass stressfully quick; his days entirely schoolwork and modules, nights polishing the premiere in between revising and bullying Phasma about her recordings. He is certain it's all going to fall apart the moment he gets back, but for a few spare days it all balances, and he ends up rewarded afternoon on Friday with a sequel to the Armin story on the new Knight Terrors.

The protagonist starts out unusually upbeat to the last installment, brightly recounting his boyfriend’s rapid recovery and their ensuing plans for the future. The initial joy makes the slow reveal that said boyfriend has been cannibalizing their various friends, like the original monster that injured him, rather intensely wrenching. The most effective part is the death scene at the end though, which actually has Hux pause the audio to recover, swallowing tight when the narrator/writer does a rather too convincing sobbing bit paired with ascending, static-bursting music while he becomes the final victim.

Hux isn’t sure what it is about this particular narrator, but he dislikes the hollow feeling it puts in his stomach hearing them so distraught. Conversely, he must admit that behind the vicarious heartbreak, he’s actually a little resentful. He works for months at a time to achieve something just approaching this emotive, and the narrator here puts out new stories almost every week.

A familiar knock on the door interrupts the musing, and Hux looks to his phone with a start, cross but not surprised to see it report back that it's nearly 3 – two hours after they planned to leave. He makes sure to slide the app closed as he stands, scrubbing at his face and hastily glancing into the mirror to confirm he doesn’t appear particularly morose. He doesn't feel like fielding more awkward questions about his state of being.

Ren has been surprisingly unconfident the last two weeks, hesitantly checking in every time they pass each other in the hall; it’s gotten to a point that a group on the lower floors have turned to taking bets on what it’s about, then were idiots enough to take it to the dorm message boards in bad code. Hux had taken special care to walk just behind a pair of them on the commute home yesterday, bitterly enjoying the panicked glances backward.

“Hey,” Ren says, blinking widely as the door opens, a bag slipping across his hip when he leans in from the hall. He takes a deep breath, definitely about to say _it_ again. “You still good to go?”

Hux rolls his eyes, turning back around into his room for his things. He reaches down to the pile of unpacked effects on his bed, abandoned when he received the Knight Terrors notification. He snaps the case together for his toothbrush, quick to shove it in next to the rest of the contents of his toiletries bag, zipping it up and shunting the thing entire into his main pack. “What did I say the day before yesterday?”

Ren is quiet until Hux looks up, then sighs, “To stop asking.”

“So you did hear that,” Hux says, reaching for his laptop and more carefully putting that in its bag. “I wasn’t certain.”

“I’m getting my car out of storage,” Ren says, reaching up with one hand to run through his hair, gesturing toward the end of the hall with the other at the stairs; his head even lolls to the side in his palm as if his own sullen mood pains him. “Are you going to come so I don’t have to fucking drive back here?”

“I should make you,” Hux says, lacing his shoes and standing, grabbing both his bags to swing over his head and onto his shoulders. “Maybe another day.”

The storage facility turns out to be only a few blocks away, despite the whinging, and is actually some sort of giant waste of space garage. Granted, it is mostly underground, and Hux does appreciate the design of a good automated system, so he peeks over Ren’s shoulder to observe him punch in a number and start the machine. He steps back as the car slides out of the door on its own, like some kind of ready meal on a conveyor, a few questions at the tip of his tongue, but all ideas of engineering marvel are lost when he realizes the make and model.

“Has it brought you the wrong car?” Hux asks faintly, carefully sliding his hands into pockets, so he doesn’t give into the painfully strong urge to reach out and touch the black hood. The stacked _GTR_ on the grille is practically mocking him.

“No?” Ren says, taking a step back and glancing across the car like it was a serious question. He tilts his head, then points down at the front, keys jingling in hand. “See, the license plate is good.”

Hux follows the gesture, then rolls his eyes up to find Ren very close to grinning back. It does in fact say _KYLOREN_ , so – Wait, has he read that before? Perhaps this isn’t actually the first time he’s seen this particular car, though it definitely wasn’t in front of their building.

“It’s cool, right?” Ren asks, walking over to the driver side and leaning against the top of the car.

“It _is_ a nice car,” Hux allows, hesitantly reaching for the door when he hears the telltale noise of a lock click. It's immaculate all around: the exterior shiny and sparkling, and the interior wrapped in taut black with red edging. He carefully reaches over the headrest to puts his bags in the back, then sits down with a wince at the creak of expensive, underused leather. “Do you drive it often?”

“No,” Ren says, his voice and expression both disgruntled. He slides into the driver seat with far less care than Hux took, practically throwing his own bag into the bucket seat behind his, then settling in and pressing the ignition button with a grumble. “Another reason not to live in the city.”

Hux has never actually driven in the city himself, or even seen to get a license, so he doesn’t quite understand the frustration, but he is quickly certain that it’s safer that Ren isn’t on the road all that often. He appears to go into an odd sort of trance once they cross the bridge, staring blank faced at the road as he breaks out on the motorway at a speed decidedly over the legal limit, veering between other, slower cars with barely pause to think. Hux actually finds himself smirking as a quickly disappearing driver in a lorry sends a very rude gesture, only to feel something distinctive, if intangible, at the back of his neck.

He turns his head to find Ren doing a bad impression of not looking, whatever state he was in broken. His fingers have tightened slightly, one thumb tapping quickly against the wheel.

“Oh,” Hux intones, clicking his tongue some as he raises an eyebrow, tilting his head to better catch Ren’s eyes. “Were you expecting me to be intimidated by your driving?”

Ren glances away, toward the mirror, but the tightening curve of his lips communicates a transparent answer: _yes_.

“You’ll have to try a bit harder,” Hux says, looking back down to his phone with a low huff. He probably _should_ be a little concerned for their survival, as he doesn’t know if Ren’s got an awful driving record and wrecked better cars than this one, but somehow Hux is finding the drive more pleasant than anything else.

Ren exhales something under his breath, then shifts in his seat. “You just usually love to complain.”

Hux sends a withering glance sideways, catching Ren’s smirk for an instant.

“What are you doing, anyway,” Ren asks, his tone going flat, mocking.“Homework?”

“No,” Hux says, after a split-second debate on whether or not to lie, flicking his thumb to slide a few tabs away. He’d found a report from the twenties that a cannibal, vampire-obsessed collective had set up in the Hamptons; it is ostensibly unrelated to the Amidala Manor, but he’ll keep it in the back of his mind for the podcast. “Reading up on your haunted house.”

“Oh, you actually – “ Ren pauses, seemingly taking the rare occasion to mull over his words. “You think something is really there?”

Hux exhales a steady sigh, narrowing his eyes as he finds Ren glancing quickly between him and the road. “I don’t know; as said, I’m just interested in horror.”

“Why, though?” Ren asks, his voice curling around the words in a decided return of the patronizing tone from the café. He gives a low scoff. “I mean, you don’t really seem the type to like that stuff – did you get traumatized or something?

Hux sneers back, feeling a loathsome kneejerk reaction rear its ugly head; he always ends up saying something he shouldn’t just to try and make Ren feel stupid, and now is no different. “ _Well_. My father killed my stepmother when I was sixteen.”

“What?” Ren says, practically scoffing under his breath. “Bullshit.”

“In front of me, actually,” Hux adds, mortified cold flashing across his nape and blending with that mild fury. His mouth just _won’t_ bloody close when it comes to this stupid man. “I think he was planning to go for a full wipeout.”

Ren looks over with wide eyes now, mouth completely slack of whatever previous smugness was curling his lips. His attention has veered dangerously far off the road, and it’s terrible, yet still _so_ satisfying.

“But I think it was afterward that made the real difference,” Hux continues, now simply attempting to keep his tone something like dismissive. The tactic makes it far easier for him to pretend he’s talking about someone else, and ignore the escalating white noise between his ears. “When the police found my birth mother’s body in the back garden. I always felt strange out there.”

Ren stays absolutely silent for a predictably long amount of time, eyes firmly on the back of a lorry for a few miles, until he abruptly inhales like he’d been holding his breath as well as his words. “Right. Okay.”

Hux feels a reluctant smirk cross his lips, watching unease settle heavy across Ren’s hunching shoulders. “Why did you ask if you didn’t want to know?”

“Because I expected, like… I don’t know. Horror movies?” Ren sinks further into his seat with an uncomfortable, guilty scowl set toward the windscreen. It lasts until he glances sideways with a visible start, mouth slanting into a frown. “Is any of that even true?”

“Every word,” Hux assures, leaning in on the armrest and realizing that he’s actually found it curiously _easy_ to talk. Usually, he starts to lie right away, but… Phasma’s words still weigh heavy on his mind, making his tongue loose for this man with a vaguely similar past dogging at his heels. “I actually have a Sun article saved – apparently, I’m doomed to a future of my own grisly murders because of hyper-recessive ginger genes.”

Ren sends a narrow-eyed look. “What?”

“It’s a tabloid that publishes esteemed articles about babies with devil birthmarks and lizard-people politicians,” Hux explains, lifting one hand and turning his fingers in a cyclical gesture, rolling his eyes at having to explain the kindling fodder; he remembers being convinced that everyone took it seriously, but now it’s just an absurd memory – although, it _was_ part of the reason he left the country.

“Like the National Enquirer?” Ren asks, an entirely heartfelt sort of glower twisting across his face. His lips curl up over his teeth for a scant moment, his words soon instigated by a heavy exhale. “I uh, I… I know what that’s like – being so high-profile, though I don’t know how you can talk about the awful shit so fucking _glibly_.”

Hux actually feels a huff break from his throat, distress fading in bizarre record time. “Emotional repression helps.”

Ren shakes his head, thumb tapping again at the wheel. “If you say so.”

“I do,” Hux says dryly, looking to his phone and hesitating a few moments before typing in Ren’s name and tapping news – a curiosity he should’ve satisfied months ago _._ He ends up with mostly articles about the Senator, and frowns as he scrolls, wondering if he might need to – wait, was that?

“ _’Organa Baby Scare’_ ,” he reads aloud, finally finding a relevant headline, only to realize with some shock it’s from barely three weeks ago. “ _’Sophie Turner and Benny Organa have purportedly been in panic about_ – have you actually met this actress?”

“What are you doing?” Ren says, eyes darting sideways and down, brow twitching; he leans over, taking one hand from the wheel to grab at the phone. “Don’t read that – ”

Hux slaps his hand away, snapping fingers twice at the windscreen. It’s just merged together, and he’d hate cross into oncoming traffic because of gossip rags. “Look at the bloody road!”

“Christ, Hux,” Ren mutters, looking forward again as he curls the offending hand into his chest with exaggerated injury. “Way to overreact.”

Hux rolls his eyes, switching his phone between sides and letting it rest near the window, for all the good it might do if Ren decided he really wanted it. “I’d rather not die, _Benny_.”

“Do not fucking call me that,” Ren snaps, shifting forward in his seat, voice breaking with somewhat more vitriol than strictly appropriate. “Ever.”

Hux manages to hold back an overwhelming urge to repeat himself. “Sore spot?”

“I’ve been going by Ren since I was like four,” Ren says, jaw visibly tensing as he glances over again to the phone, a grimace twisting at his lips. “The assholes write fiction about me and don’t even use my name.”

Hux hums low in his throat, glancing over Ren’s angry profile, and grudgingly allows that as reason enough to hate something so simple as a name – at least none of the drivel about Hux’s family had dared to call him something similarly juvenile, and there _were_ options. He’s also never been accused of sleeping with a random actress, being party to unintentional pregnancies, or any of the other things he might read if he scrolled further, which carves a bewildering hollow in his chest. He turns to look out the window at the lines of passing trees, reluctantly striking one or two things he’d planned to attempt this weekend. Ren is a twat, but that doesn’t mean he’s not in another league: the luxury car, the house in the Hamptons, the Naberrie pedigree. Meanwhile, Hux is a stray with little more than student debt to his name.

“You hungry?” Ren asks, exhaling hard through his nose with something that might be an attempt to settle his temper, shifting in his seat and glancing into the rear mirror. “I can go up to town first.”

Hux glances to the little shops dotting the road they’re already on, and wonders what is wrong with any of them. “I literally have no idea what is out here, Ren.”

“We can go later,” Ren says, pausing for a moment, then clicking his tongue with an unmistakably snide edge. “If you don’t get scared off.”

“If anything happens,” Hux says, rolling his eyes sideways into a glare, for all the side of Ren’s face can see it. “Which is unlikely, _you_ will be the one overreacting, as it is what you do best.”

“Asshole,” Ren mutters, his voice punctuated by a low scoff.

The motorway merges again into two lanes, then an even smaller street, every turn seeming to make the route more and more narrow. He finally looks to Ren as they pass a ‘private road’ notice, getting a curious look in return, and grudgingly accepts that he’s probably not walking into a trespassing charge so early in the weekend. The state of the road itself does make him edgy, unpaved and slightly overgrown, but not completely untrodden in anything even like days, let alone decades. His mind is just looking for odds here or there to latch onto; details to hold and exaggerate for fiction.

The woods soon part to a rolling, unkempt field, the manor itself rising quickly at the end of a long, hedged drive that has now blended into pristine white rock. Hux can even see the ocean just behind, finding himself slightly entranced as Ren pulls up to a stable-turned-pool house. It all looks rather impossibly preserved, no damage from the sea or storms. The place is practically a postcard.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “So there’s like five rooms on this level, a couple bathrooms, and then third floor there’s the master bedroom with an en suite, an office library and a, uh, nursery,” Ren says, throwing his bag into a room in what seems to be a random choice at the very end of the hall. He runs a hand through his hair again. “You can stay wherever. Obviously.”
> 
> Hux raises an eyebrow, repositioning the bag on his shoulder. “Why aren’t you taking the upstairs?”
> 
> Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then shrugs, turning brusquely around on a heel and marching back towards the stairs. “I dunno. You can have it if you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I put an unholy amount of time researching the slightly narrow criteria of big, but not _too_ big,18th century houses, so hopefully the walk-through is not super boring. [This house ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFhnexFa2bQ), Kilkare, is the one I _kind of_ imagined, like in terms of location and age, but it's bigger and not particularly isolated, and tragically lacking in pool houses, or the "blessing" of last being renovated in the 1970s.

“Well?” Ren prompts, tapping at the ignition just as he shifts into neutral.

Hux turns shortly to raise an eyebrow, reminded starkly of just hours ago with the car itself. What is it Ren expects him to say – is he seriously worried his luxury items are lacking? “I haven’t seen it yet, have I?”

Ren gives what looks to be an honest frown, leaning forward to peer out the windshield. 

“Book covers,” Hux says, reaching for the door handle.

The air outside is a shock in that it smells of nothing but the sea, sounds like gently swaying grass and breaking waves, and he nearly opens his mouth to complain about how nice it is, turn sarcasm onto Ren’s odd quirk of nerves. He doesn’t want to start fighting so early, though, only wants to explore the house for at least one night without worrying Ren will stage some manner of revenge for the insult.

He turns around after a moment of just breathing to grab his bags, stretching his back as he impatiently waits for Ren to move away from the bloody car. He seems to have gotten distracted by something just behind Hux, expression disconcertingly blank, but when Hux turns to find it, he doesn’t see anything but a path forking between the manor and the drive, leading out to gentle whitecaps.

“Ren?” Hux says slowly, knocking lightly on the roof of the car.

Ren blinks widely and finally focuses with a visible start, practically tripping as he lurches to the side at a worrying angle. He’s shaking his head as he reaches down to dig into his bag, as if trying to clear some thought. “Right.”

Hux raises an eyebrow, sparing another glance backward at the ocean, then follows as more pressing curiosity slowly moves in to take over his thoughts. He’s seen so many pictures over half a century old that he’s tempted to take out his phone, update the speculating Internet by his own hand, but Ren would probably ask too many questions.

“Has it been remodeled since?” Hux asks, lifting his head to peer across the porch awning, then down behind them at the stairs; both look recently painted.

“No? The house was being kept up by some neighborhood association, but I think they’ve just been through to make sure appliances got replaced, and that water and stuff keeps working. And that there wasn’t like…” Ren trails off for a few seconds, then gives a low groan, pushing open the big front door into a spotless, well-lit foyer. “Evidence left.”

“Shame,” Hux says, mostly just to smirk back at Ren’s slanting frown.

Ren rolls his eyes and throws his bag onto the wide staircase just to their left, careless of whatever might be in it. He pokes his head into the archway just next to the stairs, then nods sideways, looking back to Hux. “So?”

“It’s not bad,” Hux admits, glancing across the expanse of wood details and whitewashed walls. He takes a step forward, tracing his hand gently along the elaborate rail moulding, and lets his eyes drift around the foyer. He pauses in thought, then steps forward to peek into a small alcove behind the stairs; a thin door hides behind it, known to descend downward into a passage below the house. “Much less eerie than I had hoped.”

“Yeah,” Ren says, an eyebrow raised when Hux retreats from the stairs. He looks around with a low hum, gesturing vaguely, “The first time I visited, it was just… dustier. And cold.”

“Is the bedding clean?” Hux asks, curling his hand around the knob of the railing. He’s tempted to trod on Ren’s bag as he turns, swinging himself up onto the first step, but instead he just stops to look down at Ren, who turns out to be far closer than he had estimated, almost making him trip backward. “Food?”

“I told the uh, caretaker, or whatever, that we’d be coming,” Ren says, taking a slow breath and blinking a few times too many, looking down and sideways toward what might be the direction of a kitchen. He reaches up to run a hand through his hair, peeking up again in a way that makes his eyes reflect against the sunlight flooding in from the top of the stairs. “The association wants me to let them to rent it out, but I mostly just use them for anything else.”

Hux hums shortly and turns around on his toes, continuing up the steps while ignoring the flood of heat up his neck and into his cheeks. He tries to reiterate to himself that he’s resolved _not_ to pursue this, but… Good Lord, Ren may be some heir so upper class he actually gets into gossip rags, but he has some lovely eyes. It would definitely be something to tie him down now, when they’re both still young, but –

“It’s just weird,” Ren says, picking up his bag with a sigh. “The idea. I mean.”

Hux feels his eyes go wide as he looks over his shoulder, only to abruptly remember they were having a conversation. “Ah, might get some undesirables up.”

Ren grunts an affirmative, thankfully not picking up on Hux’s loss of faculty.

The next floor is lit by open doors against pale walls, yet still seems claustrophobic with the tight hall, made worse by the looming paintings threatening him with long-past wars and smug gentry with horses and hounds. He peeks into one room as he passes, finding it to be facing the entry, and realizes he can actually see a neighboring house, far closer than he had thought. It’s oddly comforting.

“So there’s like five rooms on this level, a couple bathrooms, and then third floor there’s the master bedroom with an en suite, an office library and a, uh, nursery,” Ren says, throwing his bag into a room in what seems to be a random choice at the very end of the hall. He runs a hand through his hair again. “You can stay wherever. Obviously.”

Hux raises an eyebrow, repositioning the bag on his shoulder. “Why aren’t you taking the upstairs?”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then shrugs, turning brusquely around on a heel and marching back towards the stairs. “I dunno. You can have it if you want.”

Hux stares at his back in askance, listening to heavy footsteps on wood planking, and has to remind himself that it’s not a surprise that Ren is being rude. He does peek upward at the ceiling, debating on the master; it has a purportedly astounding wraparound balcony, yet Hux can’t help but stare at the room just next to Ren’s chosen and be bitter that it’s a toilet. In some defense, he _has_ spent ninety percent of the last couple years next to him, and he doesn’t particularly appreciate change, but this is just stupid. He should be going upstairs, stepping out onto that balcony, and acting as if he isn’t a little disturbed that the owner of the house doesn’t want to sleep in it.

He waffles on his choice a few seconds more with a peek across the hall into the toilet door, curiosity getting the better of him. The room is practically spotless despite the age, clean towels on rack next to a clawfoot tub, and just next to that a pale blue sink embedded into a dark cabinet. He reaches out, testing Ren's claim, and is relieved when clean-looking water swirls down the drain. 

“Hey,” Ren yells up from the ground floor, his voice breaking through the silence like a shot. “Hux! Come look at this.”

Hux rolls his eyes, stepping out and glancing again between the doors in the hall, then ends up putting his bags just inside a room with the huge window to the ocean. It’s not like they’re going to be talking to each other through the wall when they’re the only ones on the entire property.  

The manor is large enough that he has trouble locating Ren, expecting him to be down in the foyer only to instead find him in the apparent parlor room two doors off; the clarity of his voice from upstairs evidently little to do with his position. The openness of the parlor may have had something to do with it, with an exposed ceiling and a wall of windows, full of sheet-covered seating that gives it an eerie look even in broad daylight.

Ren crouches in the corner of the room, half-hidden by a presumed sofa. His head tips to the side, as if looking at something, and he doesn’t seem to have realized Hux has bothered to come down.

“Ren?” Hux says, taking a slow step forward, only to hastily recant when Ren flinches like a spooked horse, stumbling backward and falling into the floor with a hard knock of elbows against wood. Hux stares down at him a few moments, then raises a single eyebrow. “What _are_ you doing?”

“Just looking,” Ren mutters, pushing himself up from his clumsy position and dusting his hands off on his jeans, leaving pale streaks of dust on the black fabric. He takes another step away from Hux, nervously dragging his teeth across his lower lip. “What are _you_ doing?”

Hux feels his other brow raise to join the first. “You called for me.”

Ren glances to the door, then back to Hux, a scowl folding across his mouth. “Sure.”

Hux narrows his eyes, weighing the benefits of arguing the point, but if Ren wants to pretend he’s not embarrassing himself with both the fall and now this clumsy attempt at gaslighting, then Hux can go ahead and let him. He looks away from Ren and toward the wall of windows, staring out across a wide deck, and feels oddly calmed by the sight of a planked path out to sea. “Are you going to give me a tour, then?”

“A tour?” Ren repeats, straightening his hair when Hux turns to look at him, sweeping curls away from his forehead. “I mean – I’ve only been here once.”

Hux looks across the spread of covered furniture around them, humming low. It’s not exactly a surprise, but is unquestionably a waste of opportunity. 

“It’s weird to come out alone,” Ren continues, shoving his hands in his pockets and taking a few steps closer to Hux, shrugging tight and ostensibly peering over the covered chair at Hux’s back. “My grandparents have a place I can use already, and it’s – ” he pauses abruptly, then visibly swallows, “My adoptive grandparents, I mean.”

Hux feels a certain tension coalesce, second-hand embarrassment bolting up his spine and flushing the back of his neck hot. He nods shortly, trying to ignore the discomfort. “Better kept up, I imagine.”

“Yeah,” Ren mutters, running a hand through his hair again, though now it almost seems more to hide his face.

“What haven’t you seen?” Hux asks, trying to shake the unease; he was _invited_ here, so Ren can’t dislike the place too much, and Hux is hardly going to let him beg off showing him around. He wants to dig through old boudoirs and hold history between his palms.

“Most of it, I guess,” Ren says, dropping his hand to his side and glancing around with a strange grimace. He shrugs when he looks back to Hux, chewing on his lower lip. “I looked in the doors. The third floor is the worst. It still has stuff on the desk, and there’s a dress out in the bedroom – it’s kind of creepy. Like the cleaners didn’t even go up.”

Hux tips his head, struggling to restrain the untimely prickle of excitement at the back of his throat. He glances backward toward the door with a careful hum, then turns around completely, walking for the door. “Interesting.”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, though soon his boots are heard on the floor behind Hux. “Oh right, you came up here _for_ the creepy shit.”

“Not just,” Hux says, climbing the steps and feeling Ren just behind, a step too close and palpably warm at Hux’s back. It’s difficult to tell if the crowding is intentional; he’s noticed Ren’s sense of personal space tends to fluctuate as much as his mood. “But most of the horror seems to be cleaned up, so I have to settle.”

“Could you be any more of a dick?” Ren asks flatly, though there’s a distinct echo of amusement behind the words, getting more wry as he continues, “That’s like, violating their memory or whatever.”

“You invited me,” Hux reminds, aloud this time, and peeks through a narrow window as he turns on the first floor to take the step up to the second. He traces out the grain of the wood as he goes, finding whorls of dark that seem to climb the steps with them and catching knots that blend into entirely different planks with an enigmatic consistency. The first thing he sees is a large open space directly across, walled with windows not unlike the parlor, but utterly empty of anything to fill it.

“Sun room, I guess, but over here is…” Ren pauses, leaning into Hux, pressing warm and solid up against his side to reach for a door knob. He turns it slow, pushing the door open with a creak. “Yeah. The office is this one.”

Hux does his best to escape the arm gracefully, ignoring heat blooming across his skin and determinedly finding distraction within the room around him, larger than his entire studio dorm. He traces without touching the shelves just inside the door, glancing across the spines of books covered in thick dust and seeing most of them titled with various inscrutable jargons for law. He pauses at a discolored bust of a woman in a tiara, peering close, and finds the name Naberrie at the bottom; it could be Padme, though it looks a little too old-fashioned for someone who died young in the early-seventies.

“The view is just the ocean,” Ren says, behind the desk and staring out the balcony doors when Hux glances over to him. He looks backward, a twisting sort of smile across his face. “Boring.”

“Few distractions,” Hux says, leaving the bookshelves to stand next to him, making his own judgement and finding himself regretfully in agreement. The season is too late for beachgoers, though perhaps that’s more to do with exclusivity than the weather. “Good for work.”

“Or maybe,” Ren says, his tone flat, “There’s just nothing out here.”

Hux shrugs slightly, turning around to look at the desk. The alleged paperwork is out, though when he leans down to read a few words, moving the pen and flipping through the papers, he finds it to be mostly quotes of other politicians. It is an eerie spread though, documents and folders just out in the open; it even takes him a few seconds recognize _why_. “I just realized this place doesn’t have internet.”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then suddenly exhales a groan.

“She doesn’t even have a typewriter,” Hux continues, taking a step behind Ren. He pulls at a cabinet door, but inside is just more paperwork, if stacked here a haphazard pile; he opens another, this time finding a small assortment of liquors and a few glasses.

“Probably somewhere secret,” Ren says, leaning past Hux to pull out a bottle, eyebrow raised with skepticism. He pops the stopper, taking a sniff, then immediately grimaces in a childlike manner. “Hidden away. Because it’s ugly.”

Hux reaches out to take the bottle, downing a swig just to watch Ren’s eyes get big. He feels himself wincing slightly, finding that it’s certainly not scotch – definitely rum, but it’s not too terrible, burning some on the way down.

It’s only until he’s gesturing for the stopper that he realizes he probably just drank something worth a terribly large amount of money. He swallows the lingering taste more nervously now, glancing to Ren’s face, and somewhat upset to actually find disgust in his expression.

Ren shakes his head, lips twisting into a sneer that motivates dread to tighten into a ball at the pit of Hux’s stomach. He reaches out, poking at the bottle. “Isn’t that like, super expired?”

Hux feels the tension in an instant, anxiety swiftly replaced by disbelief. He looks back to shelf, placing the bottle carefully in the same place. “Liquor doesn’t go bad, it just gets weaker.”

“Really?” Ren asks, his voice pitching low and skeptical. “It’s been in there for like forty – forty- _six_ years.”

Hux hums vague agreement, making absent note of the placement before closing the liquor cabinet. He kneels down, opening the next cabinet, but still no typewriter; he feels oddly driven now to find it. He’s definitely adding one into the podcast – perhaps it will write disembodied messages. “Everything was likely already well aged when it was put in there.”

Ren responds with a guttural scoff, wooden desk top creaking as he presumably leans back into the edge of the it.

“Do you dislike liquor?” Hux asks, glancing backward, only to find himself level with Ren’s groin. He lets himself look for a brief moment, taking in the view of Ren’s muscled thighs through black jeans, spread wide and practically inviting, then stands with a short brush of entirely nonexistent dust from his knees. “Or is it the age putting you off?”

“Alcohol, I guess,” Ren says, fingers tapping against the top of the desk, a few circuits of noise filling the room before he looks over to Hux. “And most coffee. Anything bitter.”

Hux frowns slightly, annoyed some by Ren’s evident freedom from vice. “It really puts you off that much?”

Ren is quiet for a beat, then grunts, “Well yeah.”

Hux steps in front of the last set of cabinets, taller and thinner than the rest. It would be promising, if they weren’t made of glass, betraying contents of trophies, medals, diplomas, and _more_ books. He lets his eyes refocus on the reflection, catching Ren in the background. “Bit of a shock you invited me along, then.”

Ren doesn’t quite laugh, but a croaking manner of huff is close enough to make Hux feel pleased with the joke. “You’re more sour.”

Hux raises an eyebrow, turning around to lean slightly on the trophy cabinet with his elbow.

“Or salty,” Ren amends, a particular glint visible in his eyes, and expression recognizable enough, despite being unfamiliar on his face.

Hux forces himself to stare back neutrally, ignoring the heat at the back of his neck. “Presumptuous, aren’t you?”

“Can’t quite know for sure,” Ren says, his eyes darting down suddenly, breaking the moment with a frustratingly disarming curl of his lips.

“Is the – ” Hux takes a breath, refusing to allow himself to say _bedroom._  “You said there was a nursery?”

“Yeah, set up like a couple babies are going to be in it,” Ren says, pushing off the desk and running a hand through his hair, still noticeably avoiding Hux’s eyes while he walks across the room. His voice is bored now, interrupted by a quiet sigh. “Two dressers, two rocking things.”

Hux stands straighter from his slump against the cabinet when Ren gets closer, unable to stop himself from wringing his hands in quick succession. He shouldn’t feel so disappointed. “Bassinets.”

“Yeah, sure, whatever,” Ren says, lifting his head with an unimpressed look. He points at the door, clearly gesturing for Hux to go through ahead of him.

Hux glances into an unidentified door as they pass, finding it to be slightly dustier toilet than that just a floor below. It’s appointed with a similar clawfoot tub and an oval curtain, but has a childlike design of bears on the wall, and a tall door of cabinets similar to those in the office. He reaches out to open it up, finding inside filthy towels and limp draperies, making him remember Ren’s comment about the cleaners avoiding this level.

He startles slightly at a creak just to his left, looking over to find Ren staring at a pastel green door. He raises an eyebrow when Ren looks over to him, and steps forward to follow him into the nursery with a hum, trying to appear slightly more interested than not at all – he had practically forgotten this element to the tragedy, for all Ren is a product of it.

Granted, it is _undeniably_  melancholy to look upon once he’s actually in the room. He has little desire for children, but the idea of putting so much work into something, from pasting up gaudy wallpaper to buying two of everything in matching sets, only to have it all destroyed in a single night to sit useless for decades sets something hollow in his chest. The entire house is a monument to loss, but this timeless room is perhaps the embodiment of it. He wonders if Skywalker, should he still be alive, has ever thought about this place; it would likely break a man even as appalling as him.  

“I’ve thought about giving some of it to my mom,” Ren says, his voice a mild shock in the quiet room. He steps forward, pushing at one of the bassinets to start it rocking, unnervingly soundless. “My uncle.”

Hux debates a moment, then reaches out and stops the bassinet; he looks up, scowling back at Ren’s sidelong smirk. “They didn’t grow up together, did they?”

“Met in college, found out later they were related,” Ren shrugs, like it’s somehow boring that his family went through an unlikely parent trap scenario. “My mom went military and politics, and my uncle is a diver. But mostly a hippie.”

Hux pauses with his hand raised over a small pile of books; he hasn’t heard much of the uncle, so he not sure why he’s so surprised at the contrast. “Not alike, then.”

Ren is quiet for a few moments, then exhales slow, shuffling over to a crib with a badly hidden sneer. “They both always think they’re right.”

Hux watches the enduring glower for a few moments longer before rolling his eyes, turning his attention to the rather awful collection of children’s toys. He pokes at a bear, finding it soft, then nearly stumbles backward when he turns and sees a doll on a shelf just above his head. He stares into its glass eyes – brown and soft, somehow a little sad –  feeling caught, then turns around before the odd feeling in his stomach can roll. He feels an utter fool when he finds Ren looking over, but that’s forgotten some when he catches Ren’s gaze more directly, distressed to feel that threat of nausea rise abruptly to the back of his throat.

“Shit,” Ren says, stepping forward and blessedly breaking eye contact, then actually taking the doll in his bare hand. “What is with old people and porcelain dolls?”

Hux finds himself shrugging weakly in response, shaking his head and refusing to look at the doll’s face. He thinks if he does, he might be compelled to mention that Ren has nearly the exact same eyes, which is something he’d actually rather forget quick as possible.

“Maybe I’ll give this to my mom,” Ren says, putting the doll back, his voice lowering and audibly mocking, “She would _hate_ it.”

Hux manages to nod in agreement, taking a deep breath and a step toward the door, waving Ren off when he makes an inquisitive noise. He can hardly take the stifling air in the nursery any longer, and he’s more interested in the master, anyway – it’s expected to lack anything that can stare at him.

He turns to find the door at the end of the hall already wide open, sunlight shining beyond the jamb and out onto the floor. He walks forward slow, curiosity beating at the back of his mind, and looks down at the moment he crosses from hardwood to soft carpet, fibers squishing under his foot and almost sweeping him further into the room. It’s shaped in an open L, and the size of an apartment he’d probably find to be too large; the bathroom is at the end of the long side, near the one in the hall judging by position, and visibly glittering gold even through its door.

His focus is drawn to the bed, tucked up between two windows facing the ocean, or more precisely: the slip of shimmery blue fabric across the end. He walks up to it slowly, leaning over the end and confirming that it’s not a dress at all, but some kind of nightgown, and – if Ren is to be believed – the one Naberrie had been planning to wear the night her husband went mad.

He stares at it a few seconds longer, then turns his head when he hears Ren’s footsteps finally follow from the hall, watching him grimace in the doorway.

“Creepy, right?”

“I found the nursery worse,” Hux admits, glancing over Ren’s shoulder for a moment before looking back to his face. “At least this room was used.”

“Exactly,” Ren says, running a hand through his hair at the same moment he crosses the threshold. He exhales a heavy breath, eyes visibly tracing across the room, “Damn, I forgot how fucking huge it is.”

“I’d think someone like you would be used to it,” Hux says, hearing a particularly vindictive note in his tone and only feeling a little regret for it. He can hardly imagine the places that Ren must have been to in childhood, between gilded townhouses and posh mansions with the Senator.

“Ha,” Ren mutters, a scowl twisting across his lips as he shakes his head, eyes catching Hux’s in a momentary glare that’s familiar enough it seems more habit than real anger. “I live next to _you_ , remember? This is nuts.”

Hux rolls his eyes, ignoring the flicker of embarrassment at the center of his chest, and points with a short turn of his wrist to the other end of the manor. “The office alone is bigger than our dorm flats.”

“It has stuff, though,” Ren says, looking around the room again with a visible unease. “Everything here is sort of,” he gestures with both hands, palms down and open, “Placed.”

Hux tips his head, glancing to the empty counter of a bureau, devoid of so much as a crystal decanter or a fancy doily. He wants to crack it open, but oddly feels less certain about digging in here compared to the office; his curiosity cowed by the nature of the boudoir, unsure what he might accidentally find among the clothes. It may also be the unlikelihood of preference, as well, since he’d much rather someone go through his desk rather than his end table.

“The portraits are something, I guess,” Ren continues, drawing Hux’s attention to the other end of the room, a subdivided sitting area with a trio of chairs. The dour paintings of a well-to-do family look down upon the area, three angles of different activities ranging from hunting to sitting with tea, as so many middle-class families seemed to do before the twentieth century. “But otherwise, it… doesn’t feel like the rest of the house.”

Hux looks to the other walls of the room, tracing along the aging wardrobes and lingerie cabinets, eventually drawn back to the bed. He stares at a frame on one of the end-tables, dusty to the point of obscurity, and picks it up to softly blow across the glass. He nods, turning it to Ren when he finds underneath a staged photo of a couple – the Skywalkers. “Is this the only photo of them here?”

“I didn’t even know that was here,” Ren says, taking the photo from Hux’s grasp with a short grunt of surprise. “Fuck.”

“Young,” Hux says, the image still lingering despite no longer being in his hand. The pair had somehow managed to live twice as much as he has in the same time: Naberrie an elected politician, if only for her state, though she undoubtedly would have gone further had she lived; Skywalker’s career, meanwhile, had already begun been falling to pieces.

Ren wags the frame in his hand, the photo inside audibly hitting at the edges. “I bet she wished she never met him.”

“The casefile is…” Hux pauses a moment, frowning slightly at himself – knowing about the murder is one thing, having poured over decades-old documentation is certainly another. He reluctantly continues after a short clear of his throat, hoping in vain that Ren won’t even realize the oddity. “Snapped is the term that was written in multiple sections – not particularly professional, but evidently accurate. They were reportedly both quite happy to the end.”

Ren offers a rather startling laugh in response, sharp and practically a bark.

Hux stares for a few moments, focusing on the picture, then back on Ren’s pinched, miserable expression. “I’m sure the investigators had some reason to believe it, to put it in.”

Ren looks up, blinking against visibly glassy eyes. “Yeah. Right.”

Hux holds the contact for a few seconds, though he’s sure it’s nothing like reassuring, unused as he is to attempting comfort. He reaches out for the frame, hesitant at first, but grasping firmer when Ren’s fingers go lax, sparing it another glance before resetting it at its place on the bedside. “Downstairs, then?”

“Pool house,” Ren counters with a mutter, sidestepping over his own feet and pointing out over the window bench. He drops his hand once he notices Hux looking, wetting his lips and glancing to the presumed building. “I haven’t been out there either.”

Hux gestures with a shrug, letting Ren lead and following him down the hall. He takes a few extra steps toward the nursery, closes the door, backtracking to the staircase and ignoring Ren’s visible curiosity from the landing.

He raises an eyebrow, keeping his mouth in a firm line, and feels relief when Ren looks away to take a slow step to the next level. He trails behind with a low sigh, peeking out the window on the landing as he passes to watch a wave roll against the sand. “I’ve always questioned the wisdom of having a pool right near the sea.”

“Heated,” Ren says, lifting a hand so it’s visible over his shoulder and counting off further on his fingers, his tone flat, but rising with every next point. “Clean. _Private_.”

“Alright,” Hux snaps, tempted to kick at Ren’s clomping feet once they reach the bottom of the staircase. He will admit the lack of disgusting sea creatures is a likely boon, as well, though he can’t have much judgment one way or the other.

The entry to the pool house is a pair of wide oak doors on the end, fashioned in the style of the old stable the building likely was in a past life. It has four matching neighbors on the long side all the way down the building, roughly half the length of a football pitch, though those are visibly facades by the lack of even a faux handle. He raises on his toes in attempt to see the inside, only to find the windows so dirty that he can only know that it’s largely hollow. A bang startles him before he can make an attempt to wipe off the window, head jerking with little more than instinct in the direction of the noise.

He turns the corner to find Ren at the entrance having some kind of difficulty with the lock, and watches him take a few steps back, then realizes what’s about to happen far too late. “You’re not really going to – ”

Ren crashes through with an impressive drive of his shoulder, splitting one of the aged oak doors right off its hinges to leave it hanging half-open against its pair. A particularly ominous creak sounds, both doors starting to sway and shake, and Hux takes a hasty step back, curling his lips hard against his teeth and refusing to flinch when the both crash to the ground with a thunderous echo.

“Shit.”

Hux takes a deep breath, looking sideways and infuriated to catch bemusement across Ren’s face. “What the hell did you _think_ would happen?”

“I don’t fucking know,” Ren says, running both hands through his hair, voice devolving into unintelligible stops and starts for a few syllables, until he simply shrugs, hands dropping to his sides. “Break the latch?”

“It was rusted shut, you ass,” Hux says, not about to admit that he has no clue what they could have done otherwise, but it certainly wouldn’t have been this – they could have found a _window_. “You just destroyed an antique door that you’re solely in charge of replacing!”

Ren looks satisfyingly taken aback, looking to the doors again, but his expression soon folds back into a defensive scowl. “Exactly, so? _My_ damn door.”

“Why can’t you just take care of things?” Hux asks, gesturing with a flat hand at the doors, then backward in the vague direction of the city. “This is like that bloody drying rack – the whole floor used that thing, you know!”

“Holy _fuck_ , let it go,” Ren snaps, voice echoing across walls as he stomps over the wreckage and into the building, his bluster like a hurricane of sound through the narrow entry. “I bought a new one _and_ fixed the shitty old one.”

Hux narrows his eyes as he starts after, readying a telling-off about useless rubber bands and hot glue, but the thought is interrupted by the sight of Ren at another door. “Vandalizing this as well?”

“No,” Ren snaps, moving forward with a smack and heaving it open with an ear-splitting creak, the bottom of it scraping like nails on chalkboard against the tile from a crooked angle. “Not locked.”

“Ah,” Hux intones, peering through the wedged door before slipping through, following Ren inside with a renewed curiosity.

A huge pool takes up near the entirety of the old stable, with only a few meters either end giving room for the skeletal remains of chairs and towel racks; it’s more of a hole than anything now, dark and melancholy, with coarse grass growing in the sand that’s gathered at the bottom after years of storms. He looks up and finds numerous holes in the roof, invisible from the outside, but obvious here, standing within the old wreck.

“I’m not sure I want the pool house,” Hux says, hoping that Ren remembers the joke, though a glance sidelong makes him wish he’d kept the thought to himself.

Ren’s expression has gone from playfully aggravated to soundly melancholy, eyes dark and half-lidded as he stares out over the empty space with a frown pinching at his lips. He takes a deep breath, abruptly looking over to Hux, only to immediately look back away to his feet with an evident grimace.

Hux knows that Anakin Skywalker was a swimmer despite everything else, and a very good one, so can only imagine how it must be for Ren to see his grandfather’s old pool reduced to a shambles. He runs a hand through his hair, taking a few steps away to give Ren some room, and looks over the crumbling tiling along the insides of the pool.

He walks along the narrow ledge to the other side, eyes trailing slow, and thinks there might be a pattern in them somewhere, maybe a mermaid or a bow-maiden. It must have been beautiful when it was whole, and he hopes he can remember to look further into the place when back in front of a computer. It wouldn’t be much good for the podcast, but perhaps it could be for Ren; he might like to restore it.

“No,” Ren says, the single word disquieting in the silence. He clears his throat, though it does little to improve the quality of his voice. “It sucks.”

Hux waits until he’s at the other end of the room before he answers, looking across the pool and finding Ren small on the opposite side. He gestures with one hand, sweeping across with his palm up. “It’s lovely, in a sort of forlorn way. But simply not livable.”

Ren seems to find some amusement at that, head raising with a short shake. “Livable? It’s a pool.”

“Perspective, Organa,” Hux says, gesturing shortly across the pool, not quite encompassing the entire thing, but it likely looks like he had from across the length of it. “Skywalker was apparently like a fish, wasn’t he?”

Ren is quiet for a beat, then starts moving, his boots loud against the stone floor. “Shark, actually.”

“A _big_ fish,” Hux amends flatly, dropping his hands and shoving both into his jacket, hoping he doesn’t seem too relieved at Ren’s recovering humor. “I’m sure it was like a second home for him.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ren says, coming to a stop with a shuffle just next to Hux.

Hux finds himself focused forward, staring out across the emptiness and almost able to see what was here in the seventies. The lighting would have been soft, the paint a little gaudy, with maybe a pair of windows unlatched high up to allow the soft scent of salt and an echo of waves to drift in, leaving the pool to masquerade as the sea.

It’s autumn outside, but in here it’s humid; the heat of the pool warming the rest of the room and leaving Hux’s skin damp. He feels an urge to push off from the ledge, sink into the welcoming cool, and float, staring up at the slatted beams. The water is so placid at this hour, lapping against his calves and –

His eyes snap open wide, heart beating up against his ribs in a split second of baseless panic. He swallows hard and glances around quickly, idle imaginings disappearing and everything filling back in with grime and rotting wood. He reaches out before he can stop himself and touches nothing just near his knee, looking for a fluid surface to split the air. His imagination must have gotten caught up, adding in known sensations to the narrative, though he’s never actually… It had felt _so_ real. 

“Shit, it’s almost six,” Ren says, his voice a startling echo of panic, though it seems to be entirely meaningless by comparison.

“And?” Hux says, hoping his voice doesn’t sound as weak to Ren as it does to him, clutching one hand in front of his unsettled gut. He can’t look away from the dingy floor of the pool; he doesn’t even remember sitting down by the poolside.

“Reservations,” Ren says, his hand appearing in front of Hux’s face and offering help to stand, making plain that Hux’s loss of faculty went completely unnoticed. “They’ll fucking charge me if we miss them.”

“You actually made reservations,” Hux says slowly, debating a beat before taking the hand, a flush of heat across his cheeks at the warmth of Ren’s skin, and trying not to note the size of his fingers. He glances down when Ren brings out his phone, watching him type a response to some text. “Really.”

“No,” Ren says, mouth twisting at the admission, glancing up from under his hair. “But they’ll charge me like I did.”

The fines are evidently so excessive that Ren grumbles at the mere request to lock the front door, after which he herds Hux like a particularly determined dog. He does pause to check his phone another time just before dropping it to the console, spinning the vehicle in a needless displacement of gravel to face down the drive.

Hux frowns at the radio when Ren starts tapping at buttons, feeling his expression tense once he catches the name of what Ren has decided to put on; it’s certainly not the innocuous EDM of the drive down. “SK Investigations?”

“First episode is short,” Ren says, attention suspiciously fixed on the road in front of them. He reaches out, turning the knob slightly to raise the sound just as the intro finishes. “Maybe you’ll like it.”

Hux sighs when his own voice starts in on a low complaint of a fictional supervisor. He can hardly believe he’s being forced to listen to his own damned show – why couldn’t Ren be interested in any of the _other_ fiction podcasts clogging Stitcher, mediocre as they are in comparison?

“Yeah, the accent is kind of weird the first few episodes,” Ren says, evidently misunderstanding Hux’s consternation to be something rudely _judgmental_. “But it’s a lot better by the third. I think he got a coach or something.”

Hux opens his mouth, then bitterly closes it, refusing to give in to the notion of telling Ren off for being so hypercritical. He may have watched an inordinate amount of videos on American accents, trying to flatten his voice into something he can imitate convincingly with the slightest hint of somewhere in the city, but not quite so grating as an extra in Law and Order.

It involved an uncomfortable amount of talking to himself, all told, if oddly helpful to his studies when he read texts aloud.

Ren clears his throat after Hux, or Matthew rather, finishes the monologue – punctuated neatly with a low roll of tonal music. “It takes place where we live. Sort of.”

“You’ve said,” Hux says flatly, watching the thinning of trees from the window.

“And accurate,” Ren says, one hand leaving the wheel and drifting into Hux’s line of sight with the gesture outward, and undeniably intentional by it; the sulking hint in his voice is exquisite, and a feeling he well deserves for this set-up. “Bodegas and alleys, you know? So it feels like I could see it, or be part of it. I guess.”

Hux looks over with a frown, a little disturbed to find Ren’s eyes despite his driving on the road. He wets his lips a moment, hoping his next words sound little more than neutral. “But is the story good?”

Ren scowls back a beat, then finally looks back to the road. “Wouldn’t want to be part of it, if it wasn’t.”

Hux grudgingly assents that with a short tip of his head, though it doesn’t _quite_ answer the question. He glances a few seconds back toward the window, trying to ignore the ongoing noise of his own creation, which proves both difficult and easy with the churn of comparable thought now in his head.

He very much needs to come clean from this stupid lie, rather than getting deeper in it, but the words stick hard in his throat. It’s a bit late for excuses, nearly a month from Ren mentioning the alley, and it certainly seems like something he could get very… tumultuous about, which makes Hux rather reluctant to bring up within the very confined space of a sports car. 

_Sna- **CRACK**._

Hux finds one of his hands has balled up into a fist at his front, mortified at himself twice-over and sending a glare at the speaker to his side. He put that _stupid_ sound effect in, yet he always forgets it.

“It’s a little jump-scare-y,” Ren says, reaching out with a visible start and his voice oddly tight, turning the knob to a level almost so low that the podcast can’t be heard. “Not bad, I swear.”

Hux takes a breath, looking over and prepared to defend his reaction, only to find himself mute the moment he looks at Ren’s face; he hears a croak escape his open mouth, then snaps it closed. He _can’t_ do it, not now – he’ll say something after they get back to the city, where he can hide behind his wall and his studies, which is really what he should have done when Ren asked him to come along out here.

He looks to the windshield in relief when Ren starts to slow, distracting himself with glances across parked cars as they come to a crawl along a tightly packed street. He peers across the stores in front of said cars, finding boutiques with sea-themed names and cafes with questionable rustic charm.

Ren pauses at a tight spot between a pair of sensible hybrids, creeping in with a delicacy that Hux has never before seen in him. He glances over to Hux just as he taps at the ignition, expression nebulous, then reaches for his phone where it still sits in the console.

“I think you’d like it if – if you gave it a chance. I just don’t get why you’re – ” Ren sighs, slumping in his seat for a moment, then reaching for the door to push it open. “ _Refusing_ to.”

“The accent is a bit much,” Hux says, hearing his voice emerge tight and quiet, and a little absurdly resentful at Ren for getting him to admit it. It’s hard enough listening to any episodes, but the first two are the worst; every time he does, a larger than normal barrage of mocking comments surface at the forefront of his mind, driving him to the brink of taking the entire series down.

Ren sends a sharp look over the hood of the car, eyes darker than usual in the dimming light. He shakes his head a beat later, looking away and clearing his throat, gesturing behind him and across the street to a sign overhanging a restaurant in lit neon, unashamedly gaudy compared to its neighbors. “Cor Spike.”

Hux glances past him and into through the window, narrowing his eyes when he finds it visibly packed. “And how did you get in?”

“The owner is sort of my uncle,” Ren says, sounding reluctant at the admission, peeking from the corner of his eye with a shrug.

Hux nods slow, rediscovering that discomfort he had in the car, reading over paparazzi articles. He follows Ren across the street, shouldering past in similar fashion the waiting queue, and holds his tongue at the sight of black lights and orange pumpkins, slightly ruining the exclusive feel inside with cheap Halloween décor.

The maître d seems to recognize Ren in an instant, expression going surprised, then darkening, glancing backward with a sigh. She steps back from her podium with a stiff movement, a particular sternness to the set of her mouth. “Give me a sec, I’ll… find _something_.”

“Lando said there was a canceled reservation,” Ren calls after her, his voice slightly faltering, “At 6:30.”

“Did he?” The maître d slowly backs up, slightly ludicrously, then returns atop her podium with a narrow glance into his tablet. She looks up to Ren a moment later, then grabs a pair of menus edged in black lace. “Well. If he told _you_.”

The table she leads them to requires a winding path through chatty, well-dressed patrons to the back, oddly hidden in a corner near a narrow window. She sets both the menus on either side of the centerpiece pumpkin, then clasps her hands together with a short lean forward. “Let me guess your starter,” she says, brows raising and looking pointedly to Hux, her attention sudden and almost critical. “Oysters?”

Hux blinks back at her, glancing quick to Ren, though he seems to have found something fascinating in the water. “That sounds fine.”

It’s only after the platter arrives that Hux realizes why the maître d had been so amused by the order. He stares at the neat pair of circles, with lemon wedges and hot sauce in the middle, and manages to tamp down on the urge to make excuses – it only becomes innuendo if he _acknowledges_ it.

“Have you had these before?” Ren asks, taking up a shell and one of the provided forks.

“In Brighton, yes,” Hux says, staring at the craggy, oblong shape in his hand. He looks up to reach for lemon, frowning as he watches Ren bury the entire thing in bright red sauce. “But not often.”

Ren nods slow, his eyes intense and a slight shock when he glances up from his hand, his lashes a dark flicker when he sucks the oyster down his throat. He chews for a beat, then hums just after, low and sonorous, with a noticeable turn across his far-too-generous mouth. 

Hux feels heat brush across his skin, and hastily glances down, dousing in lemon and eating his own portion in attempt to seem unconcerned. He’s absolutely certain that particular move counts as acknowledgement, prompting the earlier comments about how he might _taste_ to return to the forefront of his mind; the cheeky grin of the pumpkin, laughing up at him while he tries to gather his wits, doesn’t help the matter.

“Hey, kid,” a voice interjects, baritone and amused, “I see you’re still subtle as a train wreck.”

Hux frowns at the intrusion, glancing up, only to look right back down immediately when Ren breaks the oyster shell clean in half in his hand.

“I didn’t know you were _here_ ,” Ren says, his face in a frozen parody of neutral; the expression is entirely unsettling, pairing all too well with the fact he also seems to have stopped breathing.

Hux takes another peek at the intruder, trying to determine if he should be getting ready to be thrown out. The way Ren is acting is entirely at odds with the harmless look of a man wearing a baby-blue sweater over yellow-silk shoulders, like it’s some sort of cape, and – Hux peeks down – a pair of alligator-leather loafers to match such a brave sartorial choice.

The man glances briefly to Hux, brow quirking as they make eye contact, then looks back to Ren with a twisting smirk that's rather enhanced by a ludicrous mustache. “I can see that. You thought I’d just give them a call; tell them to let you in?”

Hux feels his eyes go slightly wide, glancing down to the shared plate of oysters, and realizes this must be who Ren used to get into the restaurant – Lando, Cor Spike’s evident owner and Ren’s _uncle_. He sits up slightly, thinking he should at least try to look like he’s enjoying himself, though Lando doesn’t seem to care much about that judging by how he’s grinning down at Ren.

Ren turns his head slow and irregular like an automaton, looking up with a presumed scowl. “You didn't even do that.”

“Well,” Lando gestures with an open hand, spinning it slightly at the wrist. “Still. I decided to drop by, maybe see _who_ there is to see.” He looks to Hux with a smile breaking across his face, and reaches out with the same hand. “Lando Calrissian, owner of Cor Spike and Bespin Books.”

Hux takes a split second to debate on standing, and ends up deciding haste is more important with Lando’s hand waiting when he leans up to shake. “Armitage Hux.”

“Armitage,” Lando repeats, speaking slowly over the syllables, punctuating himself with a hum. “Exceptional name.”

“Is Han here, too?” Ren asks, turning focus back to the table, revealing him face down with one hand raising and digging into his hair, effectively hiding most of his face. He looks unduly miserable for a man talking to someone he trusts enough to call in favors at fancy restaurants.

“Not quite,” Lando says, visibly glancing between Ren’s head and his free hand, still holding oyster, and evidently seeing something that makes him smirk. “After Halloween.”

Ren relaxes slightly, shoulders dropping, “Good.”

“You two should drop by the store, later,” Lando says, and it doesn’t sound much like an idle suggestion. “Tomorrow. I’ll hook you guys up.”

“Hah,” Ren mutters, still looking down at his plate.

“And nice meeting _you_ ,” Lando says, looking towards Hux with an actual wink. He turns on his heel a moment later, sweeping back across the room and toward the bar, where a bagged bundle awaits him.

Hux watches over Ren’s shoulder, dropping his eyes once Lando has slipped through the front door. “What _was_ that?”

“Lando,” Ren says, speaking a little too shortly, eyes firmly on the broken shell between his fingers. He drops it, taking up another and downing this serving markedly quick, jaw shifting as he chews, slumping some with a visible swallow. “Whatever. Do you like the oysters?”

“They’re passable,” Hux says flatly, mostly put off at the hasty change in subject, as the oysters are rather pleasant. The type he’s used to hadn’t been savored, only eaten quick so his father couldn’t see him get to them, so he can’t be sure if they’re better or worse. “Not too briny.”

“Definitely oysters,” Ren says, staring at the platter for a few seconds, then looking up, lips rolling together and pale. “Where’s Brighton?”

“South of London,” Hux says, though he’s certain enough that means little to Ren. He takes another oyster, gesturing with it pointedly, “Near the sea.” 

A server approaches a few moments later, speaking quick and making excuses for their tardiness, then writing down in their hand as Ren orders a dish that is evidently off-menu. They somehow don’t seem irritated, only surprised, and Hux agrees to the same once they turn to him in similar interest. He hadn’t looked much at the menu, anyway.

“So,” Ren takes a breath, spinning the plate in front of him once it’s arrived. “Uh. Did you want wine? They didn’t ask because I don’t… drink.”

Hux looks up, slightly relieved to be given an excuse to think about something other than the slightly disturbing look of the food in front of him. He tips his head, debating a moment before shaking his head. “I rather had enough with that rum.”

Ren continues messing about with his plate for a few seconds, then huffs, “I already forgot about that.”

“Right,” Hux says, taking a short breath, then making the mistake of glancing back down. It doesn’t look unpalatable, per say, yet still off-putting with the way an enormous foot sticks outside the shell, as if beckoning. “Yes, Well. I _would_ like to know what you’ve put in front of me – this does _not_ look like a razor clam.”

“Pacific,” Ren says, grabbing a fork and opening the clam, beginning to scrape down the shell with a particularly grating noise. “Lando and my dad keep them around for themselves.”

Hux narrows his eyes, then proceeds to follow along with a short glance down, doing his best to take a bit of the oily sauce and chili along with it. The creature is thankfully already separated inside, smaller and more manageable once it’s on the fork, with the foot apparently left out for amusement. “You got them because he interrupted us.”

Ren shrugs some, taking his bite and glancing up with a visible quirk at the corner of his mouth.

The table falls quiet over the next few minutes, broken only by the sound of eating and an occasional burst of noise from a nearby patron. It’s not unlike that night in the diner, almost too easy, but there’s an undeniable relief that the occurrence hadn’t been proved unique.

“You said you read the case file?”

Hux finds himself pausing his chewing, then very carefully swallowing and looking up with a slow blink. “We were coming up here. It was pertinent.”

The look Ren gives now is appropriately skeptical, as it is a terrible lie, and he drops his fork to his plate with a short lean back in his chair. He sits quietly for far too long, then exhales, “What does it say about Anakin – if that was him? That washed up.”

Hux blinks back, his thoughts having to reverse hastily on badly formed excuses planned for why his interest in the case was extremely normal. “The file… is rather clear his was the body found,” he says, interrupting himself some by taking his last bite of clam with a particular slowness, trying to formulate a proper summary of the dry notes from the assigned criminal lab. “It was only accessible because it was closed after a series of lab tests in 2001. They did DNA and the like with certain things they found in the home, a hairbrush for example, along with your uncle, then against your mother in 2012 after the media story broke.”

Ren tilts his head, glancing toward his phone sitting on the table, his brow furrowing and eyes going markedly narrow.

“I wouldn’t completely write off the conspiracy, regardless,” Hux says, looking down and folding the trio of clams all closed on his plate, as if feigned disinterest has any hope to make his words sound less inane. He barely knows what he’s saying; it’s as if someone showing the sparest interest has unleashed his tongue. “Coverups and the like, considering his many friends within the authoritative bodies at the time. It adds an interesting angle.”

Ren takes a deep breath, his eyes dark when they catch Hux’s like a trap. “Do you think he’s alive?”

Hux stares back for a few seconds, then gestures upward, pressing his lips into a flat line.

“So you read the casefile,” Ren says, “But you don’t believe it?”

“My trust for authority figures only goes so far,” Hux says, shrugging some and trying not to think about a rotten man sitting in a rotten cell, or the school that he’d controlled full of foolish little soldiers. He’d been one as well; the biggest fool of all. “The New York State Police, even less so.”

Ren nods once, slowly dragging teeth over his lip. “That explains the thing with Canady.”

Hux feels his brow furrow, lifting his chin slightly in question.

“When you got him fired,” Ren says, voice going low as he leans forward over the table with both elbows flat against the wood, looking ridiculous with the jack-o’-lantern just below his chin. “For something you were doing.”

Hux glances to the side, biting slightly at the inside of his lip, as he realizes late the implication with an uncomfortable tightening at the center of his chest. He’s not particularly ashamed of the lengths he went to get Canady out of the building, but he had no idea anyone had known, let alone _Ren_. At that point, Ren and he barely knew each other aside for stiff shuffles past each other in the hall and general annoyance at being so close. He has no idea why he would’ve kept quiet.

“I saw you in the laundry room,” Ren continues, reaching up to scratch along his own cheek, then gesturing with a pair of fingers pressed together near his mouth as it twists into a mean smirk. “Needed to relax?”

Hux narrows his eyes in return. “I have no idea what you mean.”

“Sure,” Ren says, drawing out the word far too long, “You definitely weren’t in there to make it smell for when the director came in.”

Hux shakes his head, glancing over Ren’s shoulder to watch the approaching server, giving them a stiff smile as they set a slip of paper and a pair of parting candies, shaped as little bats, onto the table. He leans over to look at the bill, only to find it entirely blank and only a logo for the Cor Spike across the top.

“Huh,” Ren says, taking the paper and turning it over twice, as if that might reveal the statement. “Weird. He… Weird.”

“He is your uncle, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, but he – and my dad – have this weird thing,” Ren says, pushing up from the table with a marked exhale. He pulls his wallet, flipping it open, “They both know my mom gave me a card. Like making me use it.”

“Your father doesn’t get a card?” Hux asks, watching Ren drop a pair of folded twenties on the table.

Ren shakes his head twice, mouth twitching, “No.”

Outside Cor Spike, the sky is far darker than when they walked in, a chill setting the hair standing up along Hux’s arms despite his jacket. He slips into the passenger seat with a thankful sigh, only to catch Ren messing with the radio again, forcing his mood plummeting to the ground.

“Music,” Ren mutters, just as his fingers lands on the icon.

Hux glances out the window, determinedly ignoring the sullen note in Ren’s voice.

“It just has a lot of stuff like, you know, you’re into,” Ren says, backing out of the space with evidently little concern for the pair of cars honking just behind them on the street. “I think. Anyway.”

“Actually, it’s – ” Hux tries to say more, but his gut has tightened into a rock again, and he exhales hard with a glance down to his lap. “Perhaps.”

The rest of the drive is unsettlingly quiet, but it’s perhaps not the worst mood they’ve had between them, if disappointingly untimely. He doesn’t know what to bring up otherwise, as anything odd about the house might invite more comparisons with SK, despite him having not even written the draft for that particular arc, let alone released it for Ren to hear.

He looks toward the windshield when Ren turns down the overgrown lane that will lead to the house, his eyes drawing across odd masses of shadows from the marker pillars. The approach to the house is even darker, almost unsure, with the previously friendly trees turning into shaking black figures against the bluish remains of twilight. He flinches slightly when Ren hits a hole, frowning some as the manor appears in the distance, an ominous and melancholy shadow.

“It’s kind of creepy at night,” Ren says, rolling up to the house slower than he had just hours ago. His hand balances on the dash when he leans forward to look at the house. “Gloomy.”

“Could have left on the light,” Hux says, pulling at the handle to open his door, closing it loud behind him with a clap. “And got some for the path installed.”

“Full of answers,” Ren says, his voice loud and sneering, as it follows Hux up the steps, “Maybe _you_ should have turned on a light.”

Hux rolls his eyes, turning around once he remembers that he doesn’t have a key, and refusing to feel even a little foolish about it. He watches Ren climb the stairs, needlessly taking two at a time. “I wouldn’t know where to find it.”

“It’s probably like right inside the door,” Ren says, unlocking said door and shoving it open with a low creak. His head turns back and forth, hand poking around for the switch until he hums flatly, pointing, and reaches out to a pair of bronze switches that sit half-hidden by a curtain. He flips both, prompting a series of dim bulbs switching on inside and outside.

Hux leans back out the jamb, finding only a single light set just above the lintel. It’s in an odd place, slightly off center, and the bulb is – 

The bulb goes suddenly bright, losing its yellowing dinge for a brief moment, lighting up the entire drive. It audibly hums for pair of seconds, then suddenly bursts, a piercing shatter briefly preceding a quiet skitter of shards onto the wood.

Hux takes a step back in shock, only to have that feeling double when he bumps right into the unyielding form of Ren. It’s worse when he realizes his hand has reached back for balance, palm landing flat at the curve of Ren’s hip, warm and solid under his fingers. He pulls his hand back after another beat, but stays where he is for a few seconds more, still wary of the mess just outside.

“Shit,” Ren says, in practically a whisper, and sounding far more regretful of this than he had the door. “Wow.”

“Bit of a fire hazard,” Hux says, leaning up hesitantly on his toes to try for a look at the exposed coil. The force had even shattered the housing, and he could swear it’s still glowing, though that’s likely just a trick of the mind; he looks back to Ren all the same, gesturing for him to turn the switch back off.

Ren pulls at Hux’s hem in the next moment, dragging him back inside with a rude tug. “Glass.”

“Yes, I can see,” Hux says, pushing him away as the door falls closed with a dull smack. He glances up at the ceiling here, wary of the otherwise friendly glow, but they seem stable. “I’m not a child.”

Ren mutters something under his breath, leaving Hux to instead drift into the room just to their left. It’s one of the rooms they hadn’t been to yet, and following reveals it to be little more than a dusty dining room.

It’s not particularly notable, though a peculiar piece of artwork stands out at the head of the room. Hux approaches it with a low hum, finding a brunette mermaid stuck against a rock, mouth twisting and staring at something across a sea that turns to dots; she’s lain out like a pinup, but drawn like an old comic book character, and that makes it the newest thing he’s seen so far in the entire house.

He turns to make a comment, only to realize with a slow blink that he’s alone in the oversize room. He glances back and forth, even shifting to the side to peer through the door into the entry, only to find that it’s completely empty, but thankfully that leaves only one other direction.

Ren stands in an apparent lounge, fitted with the shapes of chair underneath sheets and a view out to a deck. He’s fiddling with something at an evident bar, his back to Hux, but the clink of glass is recognizable enough in the quiet.

Hux takes a few steps forward, tilting his head to the side just to confirm his ears. “What are you doing?”

Ren freezes completely at the words, tumbler in one hand and decanter in the other. He takes what seems to be a very cautious breath, then looks backward at Hux, only to look down with a visible start, head moving as he shifts focus between both objects.

“Have your tastes changed in the last few hours?”

“Uh, I – ” Ren takes an unsteady breath, head shaking once before he turns on a heel, shoving everything into Hux’s chest. He barely looks up, but he does make a hasty, odd step to the side and back. “I found it. For you. Since you liked the last one.”

Hux glances to the decanter, tightening his fingers around the cool glass. _Found_ it?

“You know, I should…” Ren trails off, head dipping as he runs a hand through his hair. He stares at the floor a few seconds like that, then lifts his head, blinking rapidly as his eyes look past Hux to the door. “I have some… prep to – _drafts_ to finish for my internship.”

“Drafts?” Hux repeats, leaning forward to set the decanter on the bar, turning around himself as Ren moves, until they’ve practically switched places.

“Yeah, it’s just – I’m going to go upstairs,” Ren says, shoving his hands into his pockets, walking backward in an ungainly shuffling manner. “And do them. They’re due Monday.”

Hux watches the display silently, glancing down when Ren nearly trips on his own feet into the wall. He leans back on the bar once Ren has disappeared completely, trying not to dwell on the feeling tightening at the center of his chest, though that becomes impossible when he glances at his watch to see it’s barely half eight.

He takes a breath, staring at the dusty sheets, then turns and pours a measure from the decanter, barely a sip, into the tumbler to bring to his mouth. He rolls it around in his mouth, spreading the bitter-sharp edge around his tongue; this one, definitely whiskey. He stares at the glass between his fingers, then sets it down, refusing the impulse to pour more.

It likely wasn’t even a _real_ lie. Hux has his own work to do, as well, entire classes he’s let languish because he’d rather play at creative. He really should follow example, find his laptop, set up the modules he has downloaded…

He takes a deep breath, pushing off from the bar. He absolutely loathes that Ren is the one setting the example of responsibility – even if it was just to get away from him.

* * *

 

Hux groans slowly into the pillow, irritation inexplicably present at the back of his mind, and slowly, bitterly turns over onto his back. He blinks at the darkened ceiling, bemused for a few moments before recognizing the cracked plaster – the Amidala Manor. He really managed to fall asleep.

_Knock._

He reaches out on reflex to answer, only to feel his heart pause and then jolt, pulse hammering against his ribs. He turns his head to stare at the wall, blinking hard to clear remaining bleariness from his eyes, as if being able to see better will help his ears.

_Knock knock._

He finds himself moving backward, shuffling across and out of the bed while trying to remember what is next to the bedroom. He thinks it was a little sitting area, with green-grey curtains that he hadn’t paid much attention to, maybe a window seat and some shelves – overall, _empty_.

He jumps straight back into the sheets when another noise sounds, sharp and cracking against the _door_. His hand has found its way across his mouth, teeth biting down on his palm, as old reflex demands him to do anything he can to be silent. The pounding ceases an instant later, and Hux grabs his blanket, breath coming out in a shaky gasp as he drags it over his shoulders, trying to rationalize the noises before he can do something stupid like acknowledge the prickling of his eyes.

He reaches over to the table and fumbles for his phone, tipping it up and wincing as the light blinds him for a terrible moment. It’s nearly 3AM, and hours since he walked up here, lobbing silent bitterness at Ren’s silent, darkened room.

Another crack sounds, thankfully further down the hall, then another, and Hux realizes belatedly that every hollow smack is against the _doors_. He feels his shoulders relax, counting seconds, and manages to control his flinch at the next echo.

He stands after steadily counting over a minute of silence, drawing the blanket tighter around himself and refusing to think too hard about why. He exhales slowly, making a split-second and utterly hypocritical decision to look out the door, and to either –

A man stands in the doorway, more shadow than human.

Hux closes his eyes with a sharp inhale; refusing to overreact, refusing to think about the shake in his hands, refusing to do _anything_ but count to ten. He exhales slowly, counting another pair of beats, then forces himself to look, opening his eyes wide against the dark, but suddenly the shadow shifts forward, and the dull light of the window hits it, revealing hunched shoulders and hair wild around a bowed head.

Hux stares a few seconds longer, then glances down the hall and toward the stairs. He whispers when he speaks, but it still feels like a shout. “Did you hear that?”

“No,” Ren answers, his voice barely a creak.

Hux slowly raises an eyebrow, wishing he could catch Ren’s eyes, but the most he can see is a dim gleam across them from the window. Waxing moon. “Then why are you at my door?”

“I’m not,” Ren snaps, only to thankfully grasp right away the absurdity of his response. He dips his head with a low mutter, obscuring the pale shape of his face with his hair. “Shut up. It’s... An old house.”

“It is,” Hux agrees, reluctantly thankful for the distraction of skepticism. He doesn’t _want_ to think it was a bad pipe, or a trapped bird, but then believing it could be anything else also makes him a bit mad.

Ren breathes for a few seconds. “I still can’t believe you think that shit is real.”

“Should probably go look upstairs, to be sure,” Hux says, moving a step forward, forcing Ren to take one back; he points down the hall more forcefully this time, lifting his hand in gesture. “Could be an intruder.”

Ren seems to be satisfyingly nonplussed at the suggestion, head turning back and forth with reluctance that is obvious despite the dark.

Hux lifts his chin. “Well?”

“Okay,” Ren mutters, taking a loud breath, nodding a few times, though the movement is mostly the shift of his hair against the paler wall. “Okay, _we’ll_ go look.”

Hux feels his own expression fall, though thankfully it likely goes unseen. He takes another step forward, against all instinct, until they’re both standing in the hall. It’s so dark down further that it may as well be void, but he refuses to back down. “Go on, then.”

Ren lingers a few seconds longer, then moves, turning slowly and taking a step down the hall toward the staircase. He’s peculiarly quiet, breathing carefully and making Hux feel on edge, but it’s his footsteps that are the most disconcerting – without the boots, he’s practically a cat. 

The dark is almost too much at the middle of the windowless hall, and Hux gropes at the wall for lights, trying to remember where they might be, but only finds a pair of switches that do nothing when he flips them. He would’ve sworn those were the ones he used, but it’s so dark – he can’t know, and so let’s them go, fumbling forward to the stairs and grabbing at the banister to pull himself up behind the indistinct figure of Ren.

The second floor greets them with an idle creak of the floorboard, a mild chill, and then a click and a sudden burst of light.

“Fuck,” Hux mumbles, closing his eyes against the shock. He reaches out, blindly smacking at Ren’s shoulder, too annoyed to be thankful the lights work on this level.

“Stop it,” Ren says, his fingers large as they wrap for a brief moment around Hux’s wrist, pushing his hand away. “You’re so sharp.”

Hux manages to peek open his eyes, narrowly watching Ren approach the office with a hesitant set of footsteps. The door is closed, though that could be attributed to gravity, or a gust from a loose window panel. He glances across the cavernous sun room, eyes catching uneasily at the sight of his own reflection staring back, small and hunched, and is thankful when a low creak prompts him to look to the office.

Ren has opened the door, leaning in to peer rather than entering it; he hovers there for a few seconds, light flickering on, then off, before he retreats with a shrug. He shrugs again when he notices Hux watching, running a hand through his hair and pointing with the other down the other end of the hall.

Hux comes to a stop at the nursery door, feeling his eyes go wide as he stares through it to the dim window on the other side. He presses his lips together, swallowing tight against the pulse that’s found its way into his throat. He can see the doll, sitting in the corner of one of the cribs, dull glean of the moon over its forehead.

“What are you looking at?”

Hux takes a step sideways with a start, already feeling that sickness low in his gut again, and shoves out a hand to push Ren toward the suite. He reaches out for the door next, gritting his teeth as his hand wraps around the knob, and pulls it closed, doing his best to block the sight from his mind. He won't get sick if he doesn't think about it.

He nearly runs into Ren’s back in the entrance to the suite, one hand hovering over his bare shoulder in surprise. “Ren?”

“Cold,” Ren says stiffly, taking a step forward that is hardly the quiet padding of the past few minutes, more like a stomp that seems to echo outward. He takes another, further in, then stops, though that becomes rather understandable.

Hux does his best to wrap the blanket further around his shoulders, thankful for the unintentional foresight; it has to be near freezing in here, which is easily enough proven by the shape of his breath in the air. He finds his eyes once again drawn to the bed, only now the nightgown is _gone_ , and the bedclothes have been folded back as if waiting, a deep aubergine stain against the light duvet.

He takes a step back, toes settling warily onto the wood in the hall.

“Looks fine,” Ren says, his voice tight, though words surprisingly steady for how he’s speaking absolute bollocks.

Hux grabs the edge of the blanket, keeping it over his arm as he points toward the sitting area, then toward the rest of the windows, every single one iced over at the edges. “Are you not seeing that?”

Ren is quiet for a beat, then roughly clears his throat. “Condensation.”

Hux chooses just to look at him.

“It’s fall,” Ren says, eyes glancing back and forth, until he looks down, inhaling a deep breath. “Gets cold.”

“And the bedclothes?” Hux says primly, pointing without looking toward the bed. The sick feeling from looking in the nursery has only gotten worse, but somehow, as usual, arguing with Ren has come before good judgment. “The nightgown?”

“Someone from the agency must have come while we were gone.”

“Why would they come round to turn the sheets down?” Hux says, wrapping the blanket tighter around his shoulders when he crosses his arms, then trying not to feel too comforted by it. “It’s not a hotel, you berk.”

The lights flicker, a shutter of darkness sweeping across the room and down the hall for a chilling few seconds.

_Knock._

Hux looks back to Ren, standing at the middle of the room, and feels his jaw ticking with renewed nerves. His mouth is dry when he parts his lips to speak, “But perhaps I shouldn’t rule it out.”

 _Knock_.

“We probably –” Ren gestures past Hux, toward the stairs, his expression visibly unsettled.

“Right,” Hux says, exhaling a short breath and sparing a glance backward, a nervous prickle at the base of his throat. “Best do.”

 _Knock_.

Ren shoves past Hux in the next moment, forcing him into jamb with a smack, only to come to an abrupt stop on his heels in the middle of the hall, hovering just in front of the staircase. His eyes are pitched to the ground, mouth a neutral seam, but it’s clear he’s waiting for Hux to go down first.

Hux rolls his lips against his teeth to keep from saying anything, instead sighing through his nose and keeping forward, ignoring a following urge to more violently reveal his nerves through a well-placed punch to Ren’s cowardly dick. He reaches up just before descending, closing his eyes for a beat before flicking off the light, dropping them back into the dark.

 ** _Knock_**.

Hux flinches hard, a muted scream caught in his chest as a large hand grabs at the blanket across his shoulders, nearly upending him backward. He freezes, unbalanced and one foot lower than the other, debating quick between running the few steps further and turning around, but it feels like the blanket has gotten caught up with his shirt. He’s essential been _caught_.

“Shit,” Ren mutters, and the hand shifts on Hux’s back, pushing up and revealing it to belong to a clumsy ass.

“It’s fine,” Hux says hoarsely, trying to calm the heart thudding up against his ribs. He starts to move again, ashamed of his own irrational mind – why would a ghost grab him? And through _Ren_? “Dark and all.”

“Yeah,” Ren agrees, though his grip doesn’t let up from Hux’s back. It stays that way while they walk, slow as it is, down the stairs and toward the end of the hall to their rooms; he can be heard flicking at the switch Hux had attempted what feels like an eternity ago. “Fucking lights.”

Hux moves though his door with a slightly hasty shuffle, thankful to see unaffected windows and a mussed bed, his bags in the corner near the closet. He reaches out through the blanket for the door edge, gritting his teeth at the chill that crawls up his exposed arm, then realizes with a dull sort of confusion that Ren is still attached.

He tries to turn around, head twisting to look at Ren, and finds him lingering in the hall like he had minutes ago, only now it’s clear it has nothing to do with questioning the nature of the noise. He seems ready to stay there forever, eyes dark and intense enough to bore holes, refusing to break contact.

Hux looks away first, trying to hide his own relief while giving in to the silent begging, and releases the door to move from the entrance. He watches Ren’s shoulders drop, tension disappearing almost completely once the door has been closed, as if this room is somehow free of that cloying sense of peculiar they are both so intent to ignore.

Ren summarily drags the blanket from Hux’s shoulders, throwing it over the bed, then follows with a thump that is both utterly unsurprising and a total shock.

“Are you really going to make me change rooms?” Hux asks, feeling a reflex to cross his arms over his chest and forcefully keeping them at his sides. He’s cold now as well, goosepimples crawling up his skin, and feels a particular futility dragging at his mood.  

“No,” Ren says, curling tighter into himself and muffling his voice, “But I’m not fucking leaving.”

Hux stands at the bedside for a few seconds longer, curling up a hand into a fist and exhaling slowly, only to have his anger cooled with a miserable shiver that goes straight up from his toes to his scalp. He glances toward the door, thinking of the many bedrooms, including Ren’s, he could take, but another knock is enough to have him realize that his room hadn’t been commandeered for a mattress.

Of course, Ren is that type of skeptic; a bank of excuses, yet little courage to apply them.

Hux takes a deep breath, pushing down all the little moments that might have heat burst across his skin, and puts his knee on the mattress. “Move over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's like a total trope factory, but that sort of half-baked spooky stuff is totally what I love tbh ~


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The – that sort of thing was why you invited me up here,” Hux says, grateful he managed to avoid saying the word ‘ghost’ aloud in public another time. It feels different now, talking about them, like something has been confirmed and rendered private. “Correct?”
> 
> Ren’s head turns away, exhaling hard through his nose. “No.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added some tags just to be safe, mostly for the beginning.

A quaking smack starts it all, latch rattling loud against the jamb. “Open the door!”

Hux squeezes his eyes shut, tightening his fist into the blanket and crowding in closer to the wall. He reaches out blindly, feeling for his phone at his side, but all he can find is endless itchy carpet and more panic.

The door bursts open with a thwack against the wall and a crack of breaking plaster, dust tickling at Hux’s nose, prompting him to shove his head harder into his knees. His hand finally manages to grip around his phone, only for it to be ripped from his fingers by a clammy hand, the clack of it heard against a wall.

Hux looks up with an unsteady breath, ready to scream at Brendol for the nth time, only to find a stranger, young and wild-haired shouting down at him. “What did you do?!” the man roars, footsteps thunderous as he marches to the other side of the room, picking up… picking up a _candlestick_ from the floor and waving it in front of him in a wide gesture. “ _Why_?”

“It was you!” Hux shouts back, or tries to, lifting his arms over his streaked face and knowing he looks weak, but all he doesn’t know what’s going on anymore, and that’s almost more frightening than the usual flashback. “It was all – ”

“Don’t lecture me,” The man snarls, reaching out and grabbing Hux’s arm with his empty hand, jerking him forward and leaning in to share rancid breath, his whiskey-flecked spittle spreading across Hux’s turned cheek. “He’s turned you against me, hasn’t he?!”

Hux tries to pull away, but only gets as far as jerking his own arm hard enough to feel his shoulder wrench against the socket, the grip tightening around his wrist to keep him in place. He hears a sob escape his open mouth, strength seeping out of him and knees threatening to buckle.

“Hux?” The man says, his voice suddenly weak, changing tone and volume, as his grip loosens from Hux’s arm. His whole form changes, nebulous and putty-like to something both larger and smaller, and he shakes Hux again, but it’s not the same, instead slow and careful. “Hux?”

Hux takes a deep breath, lungs filling with air and dazedly opening his eyes, only to immediately close them as the light from a window bursts across his vision. He tries to gather himself, counting off and tracing his real memories back to this moment, lingering fear in his chest slowly but surely unwinding from his lungs.

He opens his eyes a second time, grudgingly focusing on the reason he’s awake at all; Ren hovers over him, eyes wide and darting across Hux’s face.  

“You were, uh.” Ren’s expression twists up with visible discomfort, hand abruptly disappearing from Hux’s shoulder. He takes a step back, then another, twisting his hands together and filling the room with the grating sound of popping joints. “You were dreaming. Loud.”

Hux looks away and toward the window, knowing it will do fuck all to hide but feeling it necessary all the same. He hasn’t had a nightmare in _months,_ so of course there would be a witness to the humiliation.

Ren lingers after backing away, breathing loud, as if somehow exerting himself while drawing out the awkward mood with predictable skill.

“Let me take a shower,” Hux says, managing to keep his voice flat, trying not to do anything that will further embarrass, like scream at Ren to get out. He takes a deep breath, looking back over to Ren and trying to seem unconcerned. “If we have one.”

“Sure,” Ren says, the abruptly shakes his head, reaching up and running a hand through his hair. “I mean. We do. Like four.”

Hux pulls himself out of the bed, relieved beyond measure that his face is dry, and with neither clothing nor sheets soaked in panicked sweat. He slowly walks over to his bag in the wicker chair, trying to ignore Ren’s continued presence, only to notice something gleaning across Ren’s face. “Are _you_ sweating?”

Ren glances down slightly, clearing his throat in a manner than manages to draw attention to the shape of his chest expanding under his loose clothing. “Yeah.”

Hux slowly raises an eyebrow, glancing toward the closed door, then back to Ren. “Why?”

“I was, uh,” Ren somehow manages to look more uncomfortable, pulling at the front of his shirt; he exhales slowly, back hunching in a forward shrug. “Doing pushups. And other… reps.”

“Ah,” Hux intones, rolling his eyes and pulling the shower kit from his bag, then looking back up when epiphany flits through his mind. He glances over Ren for a beat, then forcefully catches his eyes. “Is _that_ what you do in your room in the mornings?”

Ren blinks back widely, spine straightening from his slump. “You can hear me?”

“Sometimes,” Hux says, tilting his head back down with a short bite of his lips between his teeth. He folds a pair of jeans over his arm, then grabs a jumper and a t-shirt. “The wall is thin.”  

Ren responds with something unintelligible under his breath, shuffling loudly on his feet; a floorboard gives a low creak.

“Are we getting – ” Hux cuts himself off as a door in the hall slams closed, flinching first, then looking up with a start and feeling his jaw drop. He inhales a slow breath, exhaling with a steady count, then chooses the low road anyway, taking a few quick steps out of the room to smack at the door across the hall. “You’re such an ass.”

“You were being slow,” Ren responds, his voice odd with the echo, yet undeniably self-satisfied.

Hux shakes his fist silently at the closed door, flexing his hand wide and then forcing it down to his side. “Your excuses are as shite as your personality.”

The sputtering start of water is the only retort, but it is a rather effective one, and a signal they’ve reached something of an equal keel before the awkwardness could draw out further; mutual annoyance is far preferable. In fact, it’s practically _comfortable_ in comparison.

Hux looks down the hall, debating on the shower above him he knows is only a few stairs away, or the master suite a few steps further. The night jumps forefront of his mind at the thought, memories resurging now nightmares have faded, leaving him wary of noises and making him feel foolish for it. He takes a step forward out of more spite than real desire, ascending the stairs with his effects tucked into his elbow.

He pauses just outside the bedroom, disembodied creaks and knocks loud between his ears, but forces himself forward, carpet squishing beneath his feet. He stops on his toes once he looks up, upset to see so little evidence of the oddness of just hours ago; the windows clear, bedding undisturbed, even, most unnervingly, the nightgown in place on the duvet. He stares at the slip of fabric for a few seconds, satin glowing dull in the light, then shakes his head and approaches the bathroom, peeking into corners with a caution he’s badly trying to repress.

He takes a sharp breath when his glances catch on the small bedside frame, pausing on his toes to stare at Skywalker, unsure for a few seconds why he’s so bothered, then realizing with a tight swallow and a half-step back that _he’s_ the man that had replaced Brendol in the dream. He had looked so different, downright mad with his hair matted and expression twisted with rage.

He shakes his head trying to clear the image, taking a few steps and pushing open the ajar door to the en suite. It’s is as promising as it had seemed yesterday when he peeked in the door, if now lit well with mid-morning sun that pours in from over the sea. It’s more impressive for it, light gleaning off porcelain and over the glass-walled shower, striking the wall behind a deep, glimmering blue that nearly matches the view just outside the window. It’s even stocked with towels, folded neatly at hand just near the door to the shower.

He sets his things on the edge of the sink, his shower kit just inside the stall, and strips off his shirt and flannels. He grits his teeth against a shiver that goes down his spine when he glances to the window again, taking a hasty step into the cubical and thankfully finding distraction at the shiny gold knobs. He stares at their blank surfaces a moment, then warily reaches out toward the left with a short turn of his wrist.

The water starts an instant later without even a sputter, spraying down onto the tiled floor and down the drain. He stares at it a few seconds, then puts his hand out to confirm his eyes – steaming and warm, but not too hot. He knows Ren had said that the pipes and electricity had been kept up, but this is almost unbelievable – how could a heater from the Seventies run two hot showers simultaneously? Unless, he supposes, this shower has some impossible manner of priority, currently freezing Ren out downstairs.

The thought gives him some bitter amusement, though it still takes a few moments for him to step under the water. He’s relieved to rinse off the remnants of his dreams, lingering chill disappearing and thankfully less severe than it could have been, though that was likely due to Ren’s rude, if mostly fortunate intervention. He tries not to think about the dream itself, or the undeniable inclusion of _Skywalker_ – clearly, writing is hardly the outlet he thinks it is for his imagination.

Hux turns his head up against the spray, heat seeping further into his skin, and is relieved to have his thoughts pulled in another, more pleasant direction. The fact that he has been hearing workouts in the mornings is hardly a surprise, but until now he assumed it was something completely different; the first thought was that it was sex, then eventually masturbation, as Ren had always been the only voice. It’s certainly something of a hindrance for one or two idle fantasies.

He kneels down, unzipping the bag, trying not to let any of said fantasies too far at the forefront of his mind. He probably has the time for it, now he’s really thinking about it; he’s already half done with his hair, only needs a few minutes more to shave and brush his teeth. The only thing truly stopping him is that it’s a terribly inappropriate place for it, in this gilded, antique bath and Ren only a floor below.

Those minutes later, though, he’s definitely still thinking about it, loathing his own mind while he watches toothpaste drift down the drain. On the other hand, where he is may be the perfect place, since it will be cleaned away in seconds and usually Ren is far, far closer. _Exercising_ , supposedly, but he doesn’t need to be doing that in the –  

The water turns cold suddenly, bitingly so, and he jumps backward with a stumble from the showerhead into the glass door, popping with a clang out of place against his weight. He barely manages to catch himself on the counter, stumbling with one hand slipping across the stone, feet unsteady below him. He shakes his head slightly, breathing hard, and reaches for a towel, only… it’s empty. The fluffy towels are gone, leaving a dusty shelf that rubs dark grime across his wet arm.

He looks to the shower itself and finds the cubicle has lost its gleam, blue tile dingy with streaks and cracks in grout. He takes a shaky breath, turning around to find the cheery brightness of the sun hasn’t changed, but its effect has, highlighting the brassiness of the fixtures and the dullness of the walls. It’s as if the earlier splendor has been seeped from every corner, leaving it the same, but irrefutably diminished.

More than that, why is he – why the _hell_ did he come up here? There had been another shower on the _same_ level on the other side of the stairs. He had no reason to risk himself in the stated untouched, unrestored and likely rotting shower of a –  

“Hux?” A voice comes from just outside the door, low and almost meek.

Hux doesn’t even have the energy to flinch, and simply stares at the floor under his feet, water puddling beneath him. “What?”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then there’s a creak of the door straining against the jamb. “Just. Making sure.”

Hux warily glances sideways, eyes tracing down black fuzz in a long crack of grout. “Could you bring me a towel?”

“I guess,” Ren says, audibly pushing off the door with another groan of the jamb.

Hux exhales heavily, leaning back against the counter and putting the heels of both hands against his forehead. He breathes for a few seconds, gritting his teeth to keep from chattering and trying not to think; he just listens to the still-running water hitting unevenly against the tile. It had all seemed so real – he _touched_ it – but so had the pool yesterday, and everything that happened just this morning.

“Hey,” Ren says, giving only a brief knock against the wood before he proceeds to _actually open the door_. He has the towel out in front of him, setting it on the countertop with a twisting grimace. “I had to go downstairs for a new one. The other bathroom was, uh – moldy?”

Hux stares at him, turned at the waist.

“Shit,” Ren says, eyes going wide and retreating through the door, forcing it back shut with a loud thunk. He seems to lean into it again with another strained creak of wood, speaking into the jamb. “Sorry, goddamn it. Fuck.”

“Going through your dictionary, then?” Hux says, reaching for the towel with a short bite of his lip to silence an uncomfortable laugh, shoving his face into the soft terry; it’s so damned _warm_. How long has the water been cold?

“I didn’t think you’d be naked,” Ren says, his words hollow around the statement, like it’s still a shock. He groans, something hitting the door – probably his head. “I don’t know.”

“Seems like no thinking was done at all,” Hux says, reaching for his pile of clothing, only to frown at the jumper on top; he thought he’d brought the one with the buttons, but that is definitely the cable-knit one that makes him look like a depressed schoolboy. _Capital_. He doesn’t even know how it had gotten in his bag.

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then shifts against the door. “Shut up.”

Hux rolls his eyes, hoping that the difficulty he’s having with his jeans isn’t heard through the wood. He slips the jumper on over his shirt with a grimace in the mirror, then looks down for a comb, only to realize his kit is still in the cubicle – under the _running_ shower.

He turns around with a swallow, hesitating for a few seconds before pulling his sleeve up and reaching for the knobs. He flinches hard as the water hits his bare skin, sharp like a spray of needles across his arm, and hopes that maybe the warmth earlier hadn’t been totally imaginary, simply short-lived.

“Could you hurry up, though – you’ve been up here like,” Ren pauses, groaning loud and child-like with irritation, “Forty-five minutes.”

Hux opens his mouth, only to close it, tucking his effects back in his kit and peeking warily over to his phone. He takes a deep breath before he tips up the screen, only to blink, finding a wall to texts down the length, and all from Ren asking him where he’d gone. He could have sworn it had barely been ten minutes, but the texts alone vary from half an hour to five minutes ago.

The phone nearly ends up on the floor when it buzzes again, this time an angry red emoji. And then another.

“Ren,” Hux snaps, pulling the door open; all too happy to watch Ren lose balance and nearly fall backward onto the floor. “Stop it.”

Ren scowls right back, leaning in, “No.”

Hux stares narrowly, then raises an eyebrow, feeling a smirk curl across his mouth. “You’re just hungry, aren’t you? Didn’t get your second dinner last night.”

“No,” Ren repeats, but that particular lie is obvious in the manner his eyes dart momentarily to the ground.

“Go get in the car,” Hux says, balling up the wet towel and tempted to throw it. “I’ll be down in a minute, you – you _giant_ _hobbit_.”

Ren remains unmoving for a moment, then turns as requested, though he’s practically stomping along the carpet. “I’ve been waiting for almost an hour.”

Hux shakes his head, piling the rest of his things on top of the towel and making to follow, trying to ignore a sudden roll in his stomach at the idea of food. He reaches the other end of the master, then pauses, catching a short flicker at the corner of his eye when the sun catches on – He feels his expression collapse, shoulders hunching up as he curls inward to hold the towel closer to his chest.

There in a chair at the lounge corner, tucked in comfortably next to a cushion, is a doll. _The_ doll. Its head is propped up, small hands in its lap, with a polished face turned against the sunlight, dark eyes set to stare steadily at the room.

Hux looks away with a start, imagining the things he can’t bring himself to do, such as walking over there to throw it into the fireplace, or pitching it out the window. He barely gets to the stairs before he’s forced to abandon the happy notions, nearly dropping everything to the floor when a sudden retch overcomes him, compelling him to hunch over with one hand over his mouth. He’s going to kill Ren; he probably moved it just to have Hux see it in different places.

A pair of telltale stomps can be heard echoing up from the ground floor – the devil come calling. “Come on!”

“I told you to get in the car,” Hux says, or tries to, as only half the statement manages to emerge before he has to lean on the wall again, biting his tongue. He must have swallowed something in the water that didn’t agree with him.

“Hux?” Ren says, loudly climbing the stairs. His head pokes up from the landing, eyes going wide the moment they catch on Hux. “Are you sick?”

“No,” Hux says, gritting his teeth against the urge to tell Ren to just shut it. It hardly makes any of this any better thinking about it.

Ren stares for a few seconds, then continues up, suddenly looking very determined.

Hux can feel the sickness fading, stomach settling enough that he can take a hasty step back when Ren reaches for his things. “I’m fine.”

Ren offers a scowl and his next move forward is too quick for Hux to avoid him, managing to take hold of the pile, though he can’t quite pull it away, which seems to frustrate him.  He breathes for a few seconds, then let’s go with a visible eye roll and settles back on his heel, turning around to reverse down the stairs and speaking over his shoulder. “Did you get heat stroke?”

“Quite cold, actually,” Hux admits, following Ren down the stairs and diverting at the first floor toward their rooms. He wonders where he should put the towel, then ends up leaving it lain over the tub next to another in the bathroom Ren had stolen into, feeling guilt about it even before he steps outside the door.

Ren is leaning against the front jamb when Hux gets down, a twisting, unfamiliar emotion across his mouth. He looks up, still for a moment, then revealing the keys in his palm just before he turns to exit through the door, wordlessly insisting for Hux to hurry again with a particularly hard pair of knocks against the wood.

Hux ignores the bolt of memory up his spine, finding it easier to dismiss once he gets outside into the cool air of midmorning. He blinks slowly, remembering belatedly the glass with a wary glance down to the porch, only to find it absent of so much as a sparkle. “Did you clean up?”

Ren turns with a start, expression twisting as he leans up on his toes to peer across the porch. He stares at Hux’s feet for seconds too long, lips pursing, before turning around with an irregular, shifty gesture backward. “Yeah. Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Hux repeats, sparing another glance backward before he steps down from the porch.

“So, uh. We have to go to Bespin,” Ren says, reaching out to the door handle and unlocking the car with a beep. “Pretty much everywhere else is open.”

Hux feels a frown pull at his lips, entering the car at a more leisurely pace, if mostly to watch Ren practically start to vibrate. He should have expected this sort of reaction over food, though he could have sworn Ren had said something about the service keeping the house stocked, hadn’t he? Granted, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to find he was just being difficult.

Ren barely looks as he backs out of the spot, more focused on reaching out to the console and tapping at a button labeled ‘pair’. “You put something on. Since I’m apparently _bad_ at it.”

Hux blinks at the screen, grimacing inwardly at the little choice he has on his phone – it’s mostly playlists that he might study to, and all rather monotonously boring any other time. “Podcast?”

Ren glances to him sharply, lips pinching white for a few seconds, then looks back forward with a plainly-forced shrug. “As long as it’s not like… a lecture. I don’t want to fall asleep driving.”

“Ha,” Hux says, tapping through the settings to connect the Bluetooth. He leans back once that’s done, scrolling through his list; he has a few new episodes in queue for one or three true crime podcasts, which would be appropriate, but he ends up flicking past all of them, tapping at a familiar symbol; a bright red sword, hilt down and flaming at the end. He scrolls through the end until he finds the first Armin story, glancing up just as he presses play, then looking back down to drag the timestamp to the right story.

“Wait, is – ?” Ren pauses, quiet for a few seconds until the announcement fades, his voice tight, “This is Knight Terrors.”

Hux looks over, finding Ren staring aghast at the name scrolling across the screen. “Do you not like it?”

“No, no, it’s…” Ren trails off, shaking his head far too quickly to be convincing. He abruptly lifts a hand to stroke through his damp hair a few times, turning his head down toward the mirror. “It’s alright. Some of the stories are good.”

“Are you having a fit?” Hux asks, raising a brow when Ren clearly pulls on said hair before finally dropping the hand.

“You’ll actually listen to this?” Ren asks, as if he hasn’t heard the question. “You _like_ this?”

Hux raises an eyebrow, lifting his phone with a pointed shake to light up the screen. “Clearly.”

“Then why not SK?” Ren asks, shifting slightly in his seat, almost as if to get further from the radio. “It’s way better than the – this _shit_ on Knight Terrors.”

Hux glances toward the window, turning his phone over on his lap a few times. “I… I simply prefer this.”

“Okay, whatever,” Ren says, audibly sullen, though it’s difficult to even blame him.

“Either way,” Hux says, clearing his throat, reaching out to poke slightly at the screen and trace his finger along the portion of the screen with the time going. “This particular one is similar to Starkiller – was wondering what you thought of it.”

Ren is quiet for a few moments, stretching long into over a minute, then abruptly breaks the silence with a sharp inhale. He reaches out, turning down the radio until the narrator’s low voice is completely unintelligible. “Yeah, I’ve heard it. But it’s just a self-insert. Not as good.”

“A self-insert,” Hux repeats flatly, feeling that uncomfortable irritation he’d had speaking to Phasma rear forward. He glances down, pausing the podcast to save battery and trying not to get too offended – he’d basically done the same to Ren yesterday, though the reasoning was far less big-headed. “Really.”

“Definitely,” Ren says, punctuating himself with a harsh scoff. He turns a scowl through the window as they come to a stop at a signal, then aims it directly at Hux, “He’d obviously been listening to SK and decided to mash up his real life with a fake one, like – Armin is sorta Jack, right? Sort of. In what he does.”

“If you say,” Hux says, tasting more bitter regret at claiming not to have heard his own story. He longs to point out every discrepancy between the two, starting with the glaring existence of the story’s narrator _._ Jack doesn’t have a love interest, and he’s _very_ unlikely to get one. He’s also described multiple times as muscular, while Armin was bloody _fey_ ; granted, it could have been meant more as an allusion to the anthropophagi.

“So Armin just like – like he _has_ to be based on some guy the writer wants in real life, you know, but can’t have because the writer’s a fuckup,” Ren says, with the sort of arrogant tone that is immediately grating, as much as the dismissive gesture he gives after tapping lightly at the indicator light, turning onto the unpaved road. “Meaning he positioned himself so he can have this guy while stealing the SK plot, right? Self insert.”

Hux exhales a slow breath, trying and failing to rationalize it’s not his responsibility to defend the writer. “He kills himself off, Organa.”

“No, he _sacrifices_ himself,” Ren says, his voice twisting oddly sharp with the correction. He glances sidelong at Hux with a low breath, expression relaxing with a peculiar upward curl at the corner of his mouth. “And it’s a good thing, because people would just keep asking for sequels if the writer left it open-ended, and no one wants to listen to more of his irritating stutter.”

“He writes far better than most of the other amateurs,” Hux says, lifting his chin with a steady breath; he can feel the flaring heat of anger at the back of his neck, embarrassed that it’s from something so inane. “And he does not stutter.”

Ren glances over again, eyes markedly wide. “What?”

“You’re just a resentful jackass,” Hux says, his eyes flicking forward on reflex when the scenery changes, then refusing to be distracted at the sight of the town slowly rising in front of them. “Lashing out since you got sacked from that internship after two weeks.”

Ren goes quiet, staying so all the way up until he’s parking his car at the head of a street, mouth twitching with clearly restrained temper. He taps the ignition button with a piqued huff. “How do you even know that?”

“You’re a _very_ loud speaker,” Hux says, returning the expression with his own anger steady at the back of his mind. “I also know they hired you back, but what I wouldn’t pay to have seen you beg for it.”

“You’re a dick,” Ren mutters, breaking away and reaching backward, grabbing a pair of sunglasses from the center console, then shoving the door open and exiting without another word.

Hux glances up as he leaves the car, finding a greying overcast sky, then looks back to watch Ren shove on the dark sunglasses on with some odd manner of urgency. “If that is some attempt to hide your face, it’s not working.”

“It’s not,” Ren says, straightening them on his face with a short twitch of his brow.

“Perhaps a wig,” Hux says, taking a step onto the sidewalk. “Though you did shave.”

“Yeah,” Ren says, rubbing his knuckles under his chin, mouth settling oddly as he proceeds to feel out his own skin.

The town is almost irritatingly quaint in the daylight, and commercially so with every window and stoop decorated with advertisements for the season. Hux peers across the offers, seeing pumpkin carving and face painting going on all weekend, a fair amount of charity parties with suggested donations and limited space. “It looks like they’re having a haunted tour,” he says, pointing at a flier with short tilt of his hand. It advertises that it will feature _all_ the most notorious of homes with the biggest stories. “Tonight.”

“Did you want to go?”

“Good Lord, no,” Hux scoffs, dropping his hand and shoving it into his trouser pocket. “Simply curious if they’ll drop by.”

“Better not,” Ren mutters, leaning sideways and not-so-gently nudging Hux to cross the street.

Hux glances across after shoving back, supposing he’s being directed toward the shop with a familiarly-bold neon sign: Bespin Books. It stands out for other reasons, as well, as the two places on either side of it look dingy in comparison, almost abandoned and darker inside, with their antiques and seafaring paraphernalia not half so well displayed as the shiny chrome espresso machine behind the bookshop’s front window.

A whippet bounds out of the cracked shop door to sit neatly in front of them on the sidewalk, itself bound in a little grey coat. It raises its head as they pass, turning in ludicrous fashion, then follows them with little taps of its nails.

“No,” Ren says, once it starts jumping up into his knees, then proceeding to nip at his fingers when he reaches down to shove it away. “Falcon, stop.”

“You’re quite lucky I’m not the type to take pictures,” Hux says, rolling his lips together to keep a smile from breaking across his mouth, then raising his hand to cover the expression with his knuckles when that doesn’t work. “What have you done to it?”

“Nothing,” Ren says, still trying to push it away, then trying to escape with a few steps back outside the door. His face twists with frustration when it starts to dart between his feet. “She just hates – _Falcon_!”

Hux tilts his head, watching it jump now on the back of Ren’s legs as if trying to push him back _in_ the shop. “I’m not one for dogs, but I think that’s some attempt at play.”

“You don’t know her,” Ren says, exhaling hard and hastily stepping in next to Hux, likely less to do with the insistence of the little dog and more to do with the elderly pair giving him odd looks as they walk past. He leans in closer to Hux, voice low like sharing a secret. “She’s _evil_.”

“She looks rather dapper,” Hux says, kneeling down after another moment watching her dance around, and only slightly startled by the way she digs her nose into his hand. He hesitantly swipes a hand over her head, only to find himself staring at her hard in the eyes – feeling a twitch of something deep in his chest, then blinks when she suddenly goes to settle at his feet with a huff, all energy contained.

Ren straightens his skewed sunglasses as Hux stands, mouth pressing into a thin line. “I’m not even surprised.”

“I am,” a voice disagrees, revealing Lando approaching from the shadowed back of the shop, a pair of books in hand that he simply sets aside on a random shelf. “She can be damned hostile.”

“No shit,” Ren mutters, voice practically in Hux’s ear after a sideways shift of his feet.

“But it’s great to see you again, Armitage,” Lando says, settling Hux with a smile for a moment. His eyes glance conspicuously to Ren next, dark brow quirking up his forehead, then dropping as his gaze narrows with some inward conclusion. “Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised about Falcon – you’re clearly a magnet for the difficult.”

Hux glances to Ren, biting back a smirk when he finds him scowling.

“It’s not all the kid’s fault, though,” Lando continues, a plaintive smile pulling across his face. He drops his hand and extends it out, which the little dog jumps up to meet, rubbing her cheek into his knuckles. “The spirit of my partner uses her to keep an eye on me. And they never liked Han much.”

Hux takes a moment to be taken aback as he watches the dog twist happily around Lando’s hand, wondering what it would be like to meet just one person without death at their heels, and somewhat literally in this case. He hates that he’s so immediately interested, as well, morbid curiosity urging him to spoil the esteem Lando seems to hold for him for no more reason than that he knows Ren.

“Come on,” Ren says, exhaling a harsh breath, though he sounds more uncomfortable than he usually might being deliberately rude. “What did you want to give me?”

“Oh yeah,” Lando says, attitude lifting and swiftly stepping past them towards the front counter, going for the shop’s tiny corner café. “Right this way, kids.”

Lando slips behind the espresso machine, then reaches underneath, bent over for a few seconds before he pulls out covered tray. He sets it down carefully, takes ahold of the tea towel with two fingers with a pause for tension, like some sort of magician, then finally flicks his wrist to reveal a startling variety of pastries underneath.

“Shit,” Ren says, with that delighted edge of the famished given a feast.

Hux stares at the spread, glancing across far more than the expected donuts, then hesitantly reaches out for a palmier mostly to be polite. He takes a slow bite, catching Ren’s presumed eye, then gestures with his chin at the stacks behind them; he needs to find something to buy before that bitter taste of charity gets too sticky at the back of his throat.

Ren barely shrugs in response, stuffing a cherry danish into his mouth.

The shop proves to be incongruous, with a vague impression that it was once organized by author, then perhaps by subject, and everything subsequently piled dubiously atop itself. Hux peruses slowly, seeing a book on camels next to an adaptation of the film Pretty in Pink, and next to that an adult coloring book that may or may not be part of the selection. He slides it out of place in curiosity, flipping it open, but nothing inside looks to be filled in.

“So yesterday seemed to be going good,” Lando says, his previously muted voice carrying far too well across the small shop. “Looked romantic.”

Hux feels his eyes widen at the bookshelf, hand pausing on an early-1900s reprint of Black Beauty. He takes a shallow breath, stepping sideways and backtracking, tilting a deliberate ear to the front.

“Did it?” Ren asks, audibly skeptical, though it’s difficult to find offense for how badly it had gone by the end.

Not to mention the fact it was very much not a date.

“Sure,” Lando says, “You had candles.”

A beat of silence. “In a pumpkin.”

Lando exhales a brash sigh, something clanking against the counter. “I guess I _won’t_ tell your dad it was a date, then. Just you and some guy. Alone.”

Hux shakes his head, rolling his lips against his teeth and refusing to acknowledge the flash of heat at the back of his neck.

Ren offers his own scoff. “Fuck off.”

“Language, kid,” Lando says, though he doesn’t sound particularly stern.

“I’m serious,” Ren says, his tone a contrast of _absurdly_ grim. “He’s like way out of my league.”

Lando offers a disbelieving laugh; an appropriate response. “You think so?”

“He’s like smart. And…” Ren pauses shortly before continuing, his voice lower, “He’s always reading random stuff; studying when he doesn’t even need to. Even if some of his taste is shit.”

Hux rolls his eyes, having half a mind to go out there and ask if that’s some sort of pointless double-speak. He’s seen nothing of this apparent _admiration_ , and definitely not last night, when Ren barely said good night before retreating to his room before it was even ten. He’d left Hux standing in that lounge feeling like an utter moron.

“Here I thought you were smart, too,” Lando says, “Unless you’ve been floating around in a pool this whole time instead of studying.”

“No,” Ren snaps, entirely too petulant at the joke, and his expression audible through his sneering tone. “I think he might have a girlfriend. And that he hates me.”

Hux bites his lip hard, feeling something tighten at the center of his chest at the certainty in Ren’s voice. Not to mention the girlfriend – who could be… _Phasma_. He’s probably seen Phasma. Hux looks down with a swallow, trying to work up to walking out there and interrupting, if just to stop the conversation, only to find the shop dog staring silently from his feet. He looks back up with a senseless start, grabbing a random book from the shelf and cracking it open, only to realize it’s bloody War and Peace. In Italian.

“Kid, seriously,” Lando says, his voice sinking into something laughably patronizing, though that isn’t to say Ren doesn’t deserve it. “Girlfriend or not, I don’t know, but he looked into your little show with the oyster last night.”

Ren doesn’t answer for a moment, and when he does it’s almost too quiet to hear. “Really?”

Hux takes a short breath, feeling drawn tight between excitement and dread, as uncertain assumptions settle into ambiguous _fact_. This is far more terrifying than anything that may or may not be happening at the house.

“Looked embarrassed as hell about it, too – which, I got to say,” Lando continues, heedless of the uncomfortable mood flooding the entire shop, “Until last night, no one has made me more happy to watch flounder except your old man. You really are your father’s son.”

Ren actually groans, whatever he’s responding with too muffled to understand from here – he’s probably shoved his head in his arms, the dramatic bastard.

“More and more like him every day,” Lando adds smoothly, proceeding to do something that leads to a clang and a hiss.

The espresso machine drowns out any more conversation, forcing Hux to turn back to try and distract himself in the shelves, only now he can’t seem to get rid of the dog. He steps over a stack of faded VHS cases, but she just jumps over after, her unnerving attention distracting him entirely from what he’d been looking for, which hadn’t been anything in particular, but it’s certainly worse not to find anything at all.

He rounds back near the front reluctantly, dreading to look Ren in the face, and grudgingly emerges from the stacks to find everything much in the same place, though now Lando is sipping from a small mug and Ren is visibly sulking while eating some sort of popover. The conversation seems to be somewhat serious, both hunched over the counter with low voices, unintelligible until Hux is almost on top of them.

“I know, kid, but,” Lando is saying, gesturing with his empty hand toward the back, then turning that into a short wave to Hux when he catches him. “The issue is not that I don’t _have_ a book.”

Ren looks backward in the same direction, straightening slightly as he catches on Hux, then turning back to Lando with a badly-hidden grimace. “Right.”

“Couldn’t find anything?” Lando says, his attention fully focused on Hux now, setting down his mug and giving a low hum. He steps out from behind the bar, snapping his fingers near his knee and finally freeing Hux from his little watcher. “Maybe next time.”

Hux shrugs back stiffly, glancing sideways at the half empty tray. It’s mostly scones now, and he looks away wishing there was another palmier, only to incidentally catch Ren’s eyes. Maybe. The glasses continue to be absolutely _stupid_. “What?”

“Nothing,” Ren mutters, head dropping away toward the door. He breathes for a few seconds, then exhales a heavy sigh, pushing up from the counter. “We should probably go.”

Hux stares at him for a moment, then instead leans further into the counter with a short gesture at the tray. “Are you sure you’re done eating the man out of business? Perhaps take some to go.”

Ren is still for a few seconds, until his mouth sets in a flat line and he steps backward to the counter. “You know what? I think I will.”

“Good,” Hux says, rolling his eyes, incidentally catching Lando shaking his head from the corner of his vision. He clears his throat, looking back to Ren and watching him take three scones into a single hand. “Maybe sugar will improve that shite mood.”

Ren tips his head back and forth, mumbling a clear mocking of Hux under his breath. “That’s yours,” he says, once he’s done, pointing with his occupied hand. “Coffee.”

Hux blinks and looks back over the bar, eyes catching on a standalone paper cup. He purses his lips together, sighing slightly through his nose and wondering how best it would be to refuse, though he could _really_ use a coffee. It isn’t even just that it’s another thing he’s being given by Lando, another reason to feel like he’s going to owe Ren, but that he’s already felt sick multiple times this weekend and it’s not even over.

“Nothing fancy,” Lando says, his voice echoing from the back; there’s a crash, then a curse, but he continues a second later unbothered. “Couple extra shots, though. You look like you need it.”

Hux regards the cup a moment longer, then slowly reaches out and takes it from the bar, finding it warm in his hand but not too hot. It might be fine if he drank it very slow, but he’s not a great fan of lukewarm coffee, let alone mixed with _poison_.

“It’s not real milk,” Ren says, reaching out and tapping at the top of the cup lid. “Almond.”

Hux narrows his eyes a moment, steadily holding contact with his own reflection in Ren’s glasses, and takes a short, experimental sip. It’s bitter, of course, and just that first taste manages to unwind half the tension pulling at his spine.

It’s not until further sarcastic farewells have been said and they’re drifting again down the sidewalk that Hux realizes Ren has _no reason_ to know he can’t have milk. Or that he prefers almond. He’s certainly never told him, has had no reason to, yet Ren obviously…

Hux peeks sideways, glancing across Ren’s face where it’s stuck in something on his phone, and tries to ignore the choking feeling crawling up his throat. He wants to say something about what he heard, maybe bring up that he hoped last night would end differently, but the feeling reminds him that he’s still lying about the podcast; that Ren has it rather backwards about their _leagues_. He doesn’t even know if they’ll still be talking after this weekend, let alone at some precipice of… of something.

He forces himself to look back forward when he takes another drink, focusing vaguely on the sidewalk at his feet. He needs to forget all this sentiment, instead focus harder on what he came up here for: to go through the Amidala Manor for the third series of said podcast. He must remember _that_ going forward; he has only twenty-four hours or so before they drive back, and he hasn’t taken any pictures and notes of what he might use.

It shouldn’t be too hard, as long as he disregards this painful mass sinking at the center of his chest.

“Last night was weird,” Ren says, his voice a low rush.

Hux looks over now to stare openly, somewhat thankful to be sidetracked by a statement he’s only half-certain he’s really heard.

“Actually,” Ren says, voice rising and lifting his hand to gesture outward with the little wax paper bag that Lando had given him for the scones. “It was fucked up! What the _hell_ was that, huh?”

A prudish-looking family looks over aghast at the outburst, one of the children-pumpkins turning red with an expression like they’re about the shout back. Fortunately, they only get as far as opening their mouth before an angry parent pulls them by the elbow before they can acknowledge the _loud ass_. They’re not the only startled ones, either; Ren seems to have chosen the middle of the most crowded street in town, teeming with costumed children.

“Quiet down,” Hux says, reaching out and grabbing Ren’s wrist, forcing his arm back down before the staring can develop into some impudent citizen actually walking over.

Ren seems to allow it, but he’s still visibly piqued, lips twisting together into a snarling frown. “What the _fuck_ happened?”

“I don’t know,” Hux says carefully, gratified to have some confirmation that anything had happened at all – it’s been so difficult to trust himself after the pool, then the shower. And the _doll_. “I thought you didn’t believe it could be anything.”

“It’s, I – I don’t want to!” Ren groans, going still while he takes a few deep breaths, though soon he seems to relax, shoulders slowly loosening under his jacket. He visible expression is now far more sulking than incensed. “It’s hard. To know.”

Hux tips his head slightly, taking the last drink of the coffee and feeling somewhat mournful.  

“Fuck,” Ren mumbles, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to bury his head in his hands, fingers digging up under his sunglasses to press at his eyes. “ _Goddamn_.”

Hux reins his first impulse to tell Ren he’s making a scene, and instead simply stands next to him, silently shouldering the brunt of the judgment. He nods tersely to a passing group of costumed children, solidly meeting the curious eyes of their parents, then is surprised by the well of indignation he feels watching a trailing pair of teenagers walk by mocking Ren’s miserable form. He certainly would have preferred Ren to go through this crisis in private, as well, but that hardly excuses such rudeness.

“It wasn’t supposed to go like this,” Ren says, dragging his hands down his face, momentarily dislodging his glasses, then grabbing at his sweatshirt collar with both hands to nervously hold. “I’m… I think. We should go home.”

Hux blinks at him, somehow more taken aback by that than the outburst. “Why?”

Ren drops his shirt to gesture widely with both hands, expression openly incredulous.

“It was… an unnerving experience, yes,” Hux admits, pausing a few seconds and trying not to let the objective wisdom of letting the house rot get to him. He can’t just _leave_ it at that, no more than he could last night when Ren came to his door. “But I did come up hoping for that sort of thing.”

Ren is still for a few seconds, face going unnervingly blank, then takes a step back, and another, until he’s slumped down onto a random bench. He proceeds to look up at Hux silently for a beat longer, head propped against the wood, then exhales hard. “Something is _wrong_ with you.”

Hux rolls his eyes, glancing to a bin just next to the bench, then awkwardly throws the empty cup into it.

“You went to sleep like right away, you know,” Ren continues, mouth set flat and tone openly judgmental. “Afterward. Like it was nothing. It took me like two hours just to close my eyes.”

“The – _that_ sort of thing was why you invited me up here,” Hux says, grateful he managed to avoid saying the word ‘ _ghost’_ aloud in public another time. It feels different now, talking about them, like something has been confirmed and rendered private. “Correct?”

Ren’s head turns away, exhaling hard through his nose. “No.”

Hux feels something in his chest stutter, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to convince himself it’s because he’s felt a chill.

“It was because I – ” Ren stops, lips between his teeth and head tilting to the sidewalk at their feet. He shifts on the bench, one of his hands visibly flexing over his leg. “To see the house,” he continues a long few seconds later, voice suddenly wan, “The _impression_ of horror. Not that – _that_ shit.”

Hux draws his tongue between his teeth, frustrated at his own disappointment.

“Please. I just –” Ren slumps into the bench, head lolling against the back until he’s staring up at the sky. “I don’t want to deal with it. I want to go home.”

“Ah,” Hux intones, reluctantly feeling amusement wash over his temper. He tips his head, watching Ren sulk for another few seconds, then moves forward to settle in next to him on the bench.

“Do you think I could burn it down?”

Hux huffs through his nose, shaking his head some. “I wouldn’t.”

Ren groans something akin to frustration, mouth twisting as his expression flickers between emotions: confused, angry, sullen. He turns his head, glasses crooked across his face from the position. “I don’t know how to get rid of a – of it. I asked Lando for a book, and – and he said he _probably_ had one but the stupid shop is a mess.”

Hux returns the presumed gaze for a few seconds, then shrugs, “Too true. I couldn’t find a thing.”

Ren seems to stare for almost a minute longer, then turns his head back to face the sky. “In SK,” he starts, as his expression relaxes into something thoughtful. “He talked to it. He could feel where it was and when he found it, he did this sort of… smudging thing, then speaking in tongues? Over a like ten-year-old skeleton of a cat that the person owned.”

Hux closes his eyes for a moment, rubbing hard across his brow with a pair of fingers. He did as much research as he could, but it was only meant to sound good in a _story_. “That’s fiction, Organa.”

“Yeah,” Ren agrees, reaching up and lifting his glasses, shoving them up into his hair. He’s openly smirking now, exposing that he’s just being cheeky. “It unbound it from the house, but it possessed the skeleton and tried to kill him. Then it ran away.”

Hux rolls his eyes down the street. He feels very tempted to spoil his plan for that character.

Ren huffs through his nose a moment later, seemingly to himself, then falls quiet again as he slumps into the bench with his chin tucked into his chest. “Fuck, _whatever_ ,” he mutters, standing with a low kick backward and a creak of weather-worn wood. “But I’m not staying alone in a room. If it – If that weirds you out, we can put blankets in the lounge or something. Rather than a bed.”

“I was quite fine last night,” Hux says, trying to sound indifferent, rather than reveal any hint that he has little idea himself how he went to sleep so soundly or so quickly. It had been… the first time he’d managed to sleep in the same room as another person, let alone the same bed. And he doesn’t remember a bit of it.

“Girlfriend not the jealous type?” Ren says, the corner of his mouth twisting up like it’s some joke, but every word is pronounced as if his tongue is uncomfortable with the shape of the syllables.

“Doubtful,” Hux says, managing to catch Ren’s eyes and hold his gaze steady. He watches him fidget for another beat, then stands to join him with a low sigh. “I don’t have one.”

Ren stares back for a few seconds, lips rolling together and slightly red when he next opens his mouth. “Good.”

Hux feels heat flash against the back of his neck at the low tone. “Good?”

“To know,” Ren amends with a mutter, dropping his sunglasses back over his nose. He reaches down and grabs the scones from their haphazard place on the bench. “Yeah. If you – I mean, had one. You wouldn’t want to fuck that up with her.”

“More likely _him_ ,” Hux quietly disagrees, emphasizing just slightly and trying to catch any reaction, but the most he can tell through the the glasses is the twitch of a cheek. He turns to walk back down the street, toward the car, and hopes that the flush spreading high on his cheeks hasn’t been caught. “But there’s nothing to worry about, is there?”

Ren follows with a scuff of boots against the sidewalk, but slow, lagging behind when Hux turns to look. “No,” he responds belatedly, shrugging slightly and shoving his hands into his jacket. “Nothing to worry about.”

Hux leans on a heel and waits for Ren to catch up, narrowing his eyes. “What?”

“Do you want to pick up dinner?” Ren says, blatantly ignoring the question and gesturing with his chin down the street. He passes Hux without a pause, making to cross, and the added evasiveness makes the sunglasses that much more frustrating. “There’s a cafe.”

“It’s barely 1,” Hux says, grudgingly letting Ren have his way with a short glance down to his phone. He doublechecks a beat later, if just to make sure that nothing troublesome has occurred miles away and in _public,_ but the numbers remain solid. “And you just ate your weight in pastry.”

“I eat when I’m nervous,” Ren says, his response slightly difficult to hear being little more than a grumble. He looks backward at Hux for a moment, straightening the glasses on his face with a knuckle, then trailing his hand up to run through his hair. “And I work out trying to relax. Then I eat more.”

Hux lets his gaze lower when Ren turns back around, lingering on the slight flex of muscle with every step. “Ah.”

“So fuck off,” Ren says, ruining the view some by working up into a fit, voice rising again, though in a more comfortingly familiar petulance. “I’m getting a damned sandwich. _Two_ sandwiches.”

“So hostile,” Hux calls after, ignoring an odd stare by a couple at a wrought-iron table. He quickens his pace, realizing abruptly that he’s _participating_ in the scene but somehow not embarrassed enough to stop. “And don’t bother, the thought of food has me feeling a bit off right now.”

Ren pulls open the door, charging through, though he manages to hold it open from the inside for a few seconds of courtesy. “I didn’t say I was getting you anything.”

Hux rolls his eyes as he walks past, setting his mouth into a sneer and resisting the impulse to tell Ren instead that he’s being totally juvenile. It would likely just make it worse to acknowledge it, so he’ll simply bring it up later, make a point to mention it while he gives Ren some biscuits to calm him down. _Like_ a child. Or a dog.

Ren maintains a steady frown until they’ve nearly reached the front of the line, then exhales with a muttered rush. “But what do you want though?”

Hux bites his lip, turning his head slightly to hide an honest smile pulling at his mouth. He’s in _such_ an awful amount of trouble. “Another coffee is fine.”

* * *

 

“I said I didn’t want anything,” Hux says, slamming the door closed behind him just to see Ren jump, only to be more surprised when he gets rounded on with a scowl. He takes a breath, catching Ren’s eye with a glare and wondering some if he’s just gone too far. “ _Yes_?”

“Right now you don’t,” Ren says, reaching out and almost poking Hux in the sternum, bag containing sandwiches and a single almond salad hanging from his wrist. “But at like midnight. Or 3AM. When the fuck ever. You’ll be happy I got you tomato and turkey.”

“There is food in the _house_!” Hux says, swinging wide and pointing at the porch just in front of the car bonnet; feeling particularly piqued for no more reason than that it’s just another fight with Ren. “We didn’t even need to – ”

“No,” Ren interrupts with a snarl, taking a step back, shoulders hunch up around his ears. He gestures stiffly with both hands in front of him as he walks, “We’re not eating that.”

“It’s not bloody fairies, Ren, they don’t want us to stay here with them,” Hux says, following up the stairs and then making the mistake of glancing up, eyes drawn to the light fixture. He blinks at it, uncomprehending for a pair of seconds, then forces his eyes back to Ren, only to notice Ren is also staring upward, though his expression isn’t particularly shocked. “You didn’t clean it up, did you?”  

Ren exhales heavily, head lolling exaggeratedly as he makes eye contact. “I was kind of surprised you even thought that.”

“I was giving you the benefit of the doubt,” Hux says, curling the hand at his side into a fist and feeling clipped nails dig into his palm. He hadn’t been really – it had mostly been hope.

Ren keeps his gaze steady for a beat, then glances back to the light, mouth pressing into a flat line. He doesn’t look particularly comforted. He takes a step forward, brandishing a key and shoving it in the lock, only to frown hard, wriggling it back and forth, then sliding it out again with an odd glance down.

“Ren?” Hux says, leaning forward to look.

Ren just shakes his head, wrapping his hand around the door handle and pushing it open with a heaving exhale, taking a step forward in a move that has his body easily block the entry completely. He lingers there for a few seconds before walking in, shoulders slumped, “ _Nothing_.”

Hux offers a low scoff, taking a moment to look out across the path to the empty beach, pale and slightly grey against the sky. He hasn’t even had a chance to go out there, to enjoy the sea or just the sand, instead being stuck in the house trying to pretend the air against his skin doesn’t make it crawl. He follows Ren in while pulling at the zipper on his jacket, and looks around from hanging it up to find Ren dropping the food unceremoniously to the stairs, though thankfully it seems to stay contained.

“I don’t even know – ” Ren takes a deep breath, running a hand through his hair and taking the glasses off with his other hand. He starts folding them in and out, leaning back and forth on his heels, visibly about to begin pacing across the length of the entryway. “What to _do_.”

Hux watches him for a few seconds more, then tilts his head in grudging agreement while looking down to pretend at something on his phone. It’s only taken seconds for him to regret dismissing Ren’s concern so quickly, coming back here to risk another night of anxiety and nightmares. He already had Ren around to confirm anything happened at all, to prove he wasn’t mad and that he might someday come to terms with other ghosts – the only reason he’s here is that awful curiosity getting to him. _Again_.

He bites at the inside of his lip, lifting his eyes, only to catch Ren still practically rocking in place, only now staring at a far corner near the door. He turns around too look along, realizing the focus must be at the window out toward the ocean path, which in itself could be a rather good answer to the question at hand.

“Do you want to go for a walk?”

“Uh,” Ren intones, taking a deep breath, stretching his shoulders back and straightening his posture when he looks over to Hux. His eyes are slightly unfocused, blinking rapidly for a few seconds before he answers in an unsure tone. “No? … _No_.”

Hux feels his brow furrow, a faint stroke of disappointment down the inside of his ribs. 

“But uh,” Ren says, breaking the eye contact to look in the opposite direction, lips curling together oddly as he looks to the dining room. He breathes for a few seconds, then bends down to retrieve the sandwich bag from the stairs, looking appropriately shamefaced as he does it. “Have you seen the kitchen?”

Hux narrows his eyes at Ren’s back, knowing his mouth is twisting into a snarl, only to realize with a start that actually… He only knows where it is because of the casefile. In his mind, it’s just a mess, torn to pieces after Skywalker had gotten through searching for something in every cabinet and cubby, throwing pots and even breaking a window.

Ren leads through the dining room, out into another hall, then pauses at a door that’s almost hidden opposite the lounge bar. He reaches out to tap at it, revealing it to swing freely on the hinges. “It’s sort of weird. Not the same as the rest of the house.”

Hux glances to Ren between blinks, unsure what the could mean, at least right up to the door swings just a bit wider with the next tap and reveals the inside. He feels his mouth drop open, looking to Ren more urgently when they actually step inside; it seems Ren had lied about remodeling, at least for this bit.

“There was a storm not long after the murder, and they didn’t have that fixed yet,” Ren says, pointing to the window, certainly now whole, though it’s been repaired in much the same manner as the rest of the kitchen – entirely replaced. “A lot of water got in, so the lawyers or the estate or something replaced it, but let the rest of it sit. This was after. When I started paying for it.”

Hux stifles his first impulse to sarcastically ask for the proper source of the money, and instead looks harder around the room, focusing on the shiny black floor and the smooth stone of the countertop, then trailing across the flat cabinets to the pair of faucets over a giant black sink. It feels like an entirely different house, though it looks some like the kitchen in the photos, if monochrome and tweaked considerably for the current decade. “The rest of the place could do with this,” he says, not quite ready to openly admit that a kitchen feels somehow more comfortable than the rest of the manor. He can, however, allow that he’s had a change of opinion in terms of leaving it untouched. “Modernization and all that. The difference is staggering.”

Ren stays quiet for a few seconds, then moves, twisting the bag on his wrist and reaching for a cabinet that he pulls open with a grunt, revealing inside a _refrigerator_. He shoves in the food with a conspicuous clang of glass, almost covering up his belated response. “Yeah.”

Hux looks over a broad shoulder, then rolls his eyes, shifting forward to fill the empty space when Ren takes a step to the side. “The food looks fine,” he says, going through the condiments and various beverages, then kneeling down to pull open a drawer. He hums at the sight of a ripped mesh bag, leaning back slightly to better point at the little pile of wax cheeses. “I can see you thought that at some point, as well.”

Ren stares at the cheese for a second, eyes flickering up to Hux. “That was before.”

Hux huffs under his breath, standing and looking over the spread. He picks out a water, tossing it in his hand, then puts it on the counter at the same moment he glances sidelong to catch Ren frowning down at it. He then makes a show of looking at a package of small tomatoes, then a small fruit platter; he still can’t stomach the idea of _eating_ anything, but that’s hardly the point. And he’s definitely going to bring some if it back to his flat.

“This could be what we do,” Hux decides, closing the refrigerator with a soft puff of cool air. He leans against the door, retaking the water to open the seal with a crack; he sips it slowly, hating that Ren has gotten to him, but it doesn’t taste of anything sinister. “It’s only the ground level, but it would still take some time.”

“What?” Ren says, little more than a breath of confusion.

“Put it back together,” Hux says, looking over to find Ren staring back and startling focused, intense enough that it’s difficult not to glance away. “Make it look lived in. As much as we can.”

Ren narrows his eyes slowly, mouth shifting until it’s set into a dubious grimace. “Would that even help?”

“I was thinking for us,” Hux says, looking away from Ren’s eyes when the words sound somehow embarrassing in the air between them. He recaps the water, clearing his throat in some attempt to disperse the unease pooling as heat under his skin. “ _We’re_ the living, Ren.”

The sheets in the lounge are the first to go, throwing up dust in the air and drawing out sneezes and putting itchy red patches on his arms. The furniture here is unsurprisingly leather, a rich brown and finely stitched, separated by carved wood tables with etched glass tops; he sits down on a chaise lounge, finding it a bit stiff, and leans back to put a single foot on the cushioned surface.

It feels rebellious somehow, so he puts his other foot up, flattening his shoes against the surface. He looks over to see if Ren is going to say something, only to find him messing about inside a cabinet that evidently has glass doors, unwrapping plastic from it to reveal various sets of tumblers and glasses. He narrowing his eyes when something at the back of his mind finds it unsettling, then stands back up, reaching for the sheets and carefully folding them in squares to pile near the door. He’s sure they’ll find a closet somewhere, maybe hidden in a dark corner disguised as a panel, so as not to be an eyesore.

“It could use carpet,” Hux says, walking along the bar and finding a worrying amount of stains along the edge; he can’t quite know if it’s from years of drunken spills or water damage leaking from any of the upper levels. He glances upward to the ceiling, but it appears unmarked, which manages to be both depressing and comforting at once.

“And the wood paneling is shit,” Ren adds, followed by a particularly heart-stopping knocking at it with his knuckles. He seems to realize the folly of that in an instant, pulling his hand back with a start as the sound echoes across the room. His eyes flick between Hux and the wall, grimacing hard enough that his jaw flexes beneath his skin.

Hux exhales slow, “Was that necessary?”

“Shut up,” Ren mutters, voice hollow with more awkwardness than irritation. He drops the hand to his side, stepping forward to stand near the glass door, all while inching closer to Hux with his back to the deck. His expression stays vaguely regretful, glancing sidelong under his lashes. “Either way, we can’t do much else.”

Hux turns and leans against the bar, glancing across the room and finding it feels somehow _less_ welcome without the sheets, but that could be because it’s darker. The quality of the furniture attests it didn’t see much use over the decades by anyone – it’s far too much like the parlor for that, but smaller and cramped, the only useful parts of it the bar or deck. He looks down again to the uneven stains, frowning at the thought of someone only leaning against it and drinking, not bothering to sit. Or perhaps, too proud.

He looks up when the feet next to his start to move, watching Ren disappear through the door to the dining room. He lingers where he is for a few seconds before following, sluggishly stepping away from the bar with a sigh. Suddenly, the place just seems so big.

Ren is stood at the far end of the room when Hux walks in, loitering at the head of the long table and in front of the mermaid painting. “So,” he says, glancing backward for a few seconds, then pointing up at it above his head with a spinning finger. “It’s like, her as a naked mermaid, right?”

Hux narrows his eyes, tempted to ask Ren how he hadn’t noticed last night, but that becomes rather secondary to the fact he hadn’t even realized it was Naberrie. “Ah. So it is.”

Ren is quiet for a beat. “In the dining room.”

“It was the Seventies,” Hux offers, looking over to see Ren has fixed a dour frown up at the painting. “Are you really so offended?”

Ren takes a deep breath, reaching behind himself and grabbing a chair, then throwing it on the ground in an almost violent manner. “It’s a _pinup_. Over the _fireplace_.”

“You’re only being a prude because she’s your grandmother,” Hux says, taking a step back and looking over to a line of covered benches, or a chest, or _something_ near the windows. He reaches up to grab at a sheet, scoffing under his breath as he pulls it. “I remember that poster you were lugging down the alley.”

Ren actually sputters slightly, stopping and starting for a moment, then evidently finding a sufficient lie. “That was for inspiration.”

“That’s certainly a word for it,” Hux allows, looking over as he balls up the sheet, raising his brow back at Ren’s glower, though slightly disappointed he’s not even a little flushed.

“Whatever,” Ren mutters, reaching for the next chair, dropping it even harder to the ground with a thunk against the patterned rug. “I was throwing it away. What were you even doing out there?”

“Walking to the train, as I said at the time,” Hux says, turning back around and kneeling at the bottommost drawer of the chest, slowly sliding it open. He blinks at the stacks of fabric for a beat, then pulls a dark one out from the top, finding it to be unpleasantly long; he folds it back in with a grimace.

He feels something light up at the edge of his mind when he opens the corner cubby, catching a teapot exposed in an open box – it’s teal with gold leafing, squat, but finely cast with ridges around the edges. Its surface is cool and delicate when he wraps his hands around it, turning it to look at the bottom; no brand, but it’s clearly expensive. He’s never actually had a real tea set, not that he has one now, but holding it is almost the same. It looks almost like the one that –  

“Jesus **_fuck_**!” Ren shouts, practically deafening, but mostly notably out of _nowhere_. 

The first thing Hux thinks, after his heart has restarted, is that he’s thankful to have pulled the teapot to his chest rather than dropping it. He grits his teeth for another few seconds, letting the echo and the lions share of his fury fade before he turns around on his heel, a scowl across his face in preparation for the damage. His expression falls slightly when he notices Ren hasn’t even touched anything, is still just standing in the middle of the room at the table.

“Shut up, I just – I keep seeing shit,” Ren admits weakly, making glancing eye contact with Hux, then clearly focusing down to the teapot. He frowns slightly at it, reaching up to rub his hand across his brow. “Except then it’s fucking nothing. Just shadows and shit. But I swear something just… “

“Since last night?” Hux asks, taking a few steps to the table and carefully setting down the teapot. He feels something in his chest relax at the sight of it on the table, then frowns – it looks… _off_. It shouldn’t be alone.  

“Always,” Ren says, sinking into one of the chairs, knuckles going white as he wraps his fingers around the carved edge of the table. “Like even the first time I came out. To look at the kitchen.”

Hux opens his mouth, then forces it closed again, biting some at his lip and knowing there’s not much to say. It does explain why Ren was so hasty to invite him out after he said something about believing in the paranormal, though he’d clearly been seeking out the opposite answers as Hux.

“It’s stupid,” Ren mutters, leaning into the table and letting his head fall undefended to the surface of the table with a smack. “Letting it get to me.”

“Did you get much sleep last night?” Hux asks idly, some of Ren’s words in the street finally finding better context. He knows Ren was already well up by the time he was awoken, too, doing his _reps_. “After.”

Ren turns sideways, cheek now flat against the table and his growing frown visible. “Are you telling me to take a nap?”

Hux tips his head, raising his brows with a silent answer, one less likely to start a fight. He certainly hasn’t seen any shadows that might make him shout at nothing, and yesterday he’d even been _hoping_ for it, for all he’s wary today.

“Fuck you,” Ren says flatly, lifting both hands to curl around his head.

Hux watches him for a few seconds, then rolls his eyes and turns back to the cabinet, digging through for more matching porcelain. He has a sudden urge to find the entire set, some childish idea of posh driving him to see it all put together, though he doesn’t even know if Ren’s kitchen has real tea.

He turns around with a sigh and only a single saucer and cup in hand, only to find Ren still head down on the table. He hesitates before walking over, tapping Ren on the shoulder; soft first, then harder second, and steps back in his own surprise when Ren nearly startles entirely out of the chair.

Hux pinches his lips together. “I told you.”

“No, you just – ” Ren pauses, blinking slowly and visibly bleary, both hands set flat on the table just to keep him up. “You made me think about it.”

“Get out,” Hux says, rolling his eyes and taking a step forward, placing the saucer set down next to the pot. It occurs seeing them together that the rest may have been destroyed with the kitchen, which would be rather awful. “It doesn’t even have to be upstairs – there’s far too many sofas in this house.”

Ren is quiet for a few more seconds, peering narrowly at the saucer set like it’s got something for him to understand, then pushes up from the chair with a groan. He shakes his head some, making to move past Hux with the surprising choice to see reason.

“Leave the keys,” Hux calls after, lifting his eyes to follow Ren walking down the length of the table. He folds his lips over his teeth when Ren actually goes for a pocket, then quiets a disbelieving laugh when a Nissan fob is set with a small clang of surrounding keys.

He waits a few seconds after Ren leaves for the lounge, leaning against the table with both elbows and watching the narrow hall. After a minute, he thinks it would be interesting to go and actually take them, maybe move the car behind the pool house, just to see what happens, but as he pushes away from the table his hopes are dashed.

Ren mutters something unintelligible but likely scathing as he stomps back in, snatching the keys back off the table and glaring weakly at Hux. He points them for a few seconds, then his hand drops back to his side. “I hate you.”

“What was that?” Hux responds, feeling no little victorious at the grudging turn of Ren’s heel.

He digs into the drawers, and the cubbies, finding a few more long cloths, a number of plates in matching sizes and color, and even another teapot, but nothing that matches the teal set. It’s missing almost all of itself: no sugar bowl or creamer, no extra saucer sets, no spoons or dessert plates.

It’s just like that typewriter, hiding itself away to make him feel a fool.

Hux trails his fingers across the surface of the table, coming to a pause in front of what he has with a frown. He reaches out to take the porcelain lid, pinching around the knob, only to flinch back when it’s warm to the touch. He stares for a few breaths, hand still raised, then hesitantly strokes the teapot down the side, finding it downright hot near the base.

He hums slowly, then slips down into the chair as he realizes what’s going on – he must have made tea. It’s afternoon, the sun is soft through the curtains, so of course he made tea.

He hasn’t actually _gone_ to tea in years, not since he was a child and really only the once, but this is almost as good. It would be better if he had sandwiches, or cakes, but… He looks sideways toward the narrower of the two doors, humming absently as something itches at the back of his mind. He shakes it away – that doesn’t matter, he’s not being formal. He’s the only one, and he couldn’t eat an entire tray all alone.

The teapot is heavy. He stands and pours slow, watching the color darken almost black, steam curling into the cool air. The cup itself feels even more delicate when he picks it up, the handle thin and angular between his fingers. He blows on it softly, feeling the air brush on the edge of his fingers, then pauses a few seconds, staring as the surface shifts with the remnants of his breath, agitating the reflection of the chandelier, and puts it back down. He should… He’s not supposed to…

He simply needs to let it cool.

The steam disappears completely in the following moment, and a hover of his fingers over the surface reveals it to be less scalding, but certainly not too cold. He feels a peculiar excitement low in his chest as he retakes the cup, lifting it between his lips –

He gags a beat later, dropping the cup and hearing the sound hollow. He looks down at it aghast, feeling his breath fade at the sight of it laying on its side, empty and bearing a swirling, fuzzy black all across the inside: mold. Old and dead. He stumbles back from the table, looking to the teapot, and sees it to be much the same around the spout and top, only there’s also conspicuous crack down the side where more mold _erupts_ , staining the pleasant teal a sickening grey.

The urge to run is too strong, pride losing out when panic forces him into the main entrance, one hand on the door handle. He stares down at it, fingers wrapped firm around the metal, but stops himself from going further; Ren had come back for the keys, hadn’t he? Hux would have to walk, find his own way back to one town or another, not to mention actually _leave_ Ren.

He leans against the wood, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath, trying to ignore the lingering taste of rot. He wants out, he wants out so _bad_ , but what he should do is finish; he should go to the parlor and strip the sheets; he should act normal. He can’t let it win –  he didn’t live with Brendol for seventeen years to run because of a bloody _hallucination_.

Hux turns around and puts his back to the door, exhaling slowly and staring at the angled entrance to the parlor for a few wary seconds, but forces himself to move. He can’t be scared of nothing, because nothing is what happened – he’s completely fine. He’s seen things in the pool, and the shower, now the dining room, so perhaps something might be _seen_ here, but nothing has actually _happened_ to him. It’ll all be fine. He just has to remember that and keep himself from thinking about it.

His eyes sweep across the room at the moment he enters, attention catching on the large frame in the back, nearly spanning the wall. A painting of the manor itself proves to sit underneath, large and resplendent against a deep blue ocean that is not quite so close in reality. He takes a moment to study it, happy for the distraction as he narrows his eyes at the little differences – a smaller deck around the back, no garden to speak of outside the edge of a forest, but most notably, the brilliant white of the shingles, nothing like the current faded grey.

He nods slow, then turns around and grabs the sheet from the largest sofa, pulling it hard enough to drag it an inch across the floor with a creak. He tips his head, drops the sheet, then goes for the next, pulling harder and dragging it further; the one over a table starts with wobble, then crashes the ground with a slam. He rolls his lower lip between his teeth, biting down, then does the same to the wingback chairs, shoving a third over with a kick when it doesn’t fall like it was meant to, and – and there’s really nothing else? He looks around the large parlor, but it’s all exposed – or is it?

It could just be another damned delusion, couldn’t it? He turns around with a harsh breath, only to stop, feeling his mood collapse back into more panic when he catches the dark approaching the window. He stumbles back slightly, wrenching his phone from his pocket, only to catch the time – 7:32PM. The last time he looked it was only just 3 _._ He’d told Ren to nap… why had he even done that? He didn’t want to be _alone_. And Ren had been perfectly fine, he hadn’t seemed tired at all –  until it was mentioned aloud.

He sinks down onto the sofa, curling into himself and covering his face with both hands, trying to concentrate on his breathing rather then the mess of thought running through his head. He couldn’t have been in there that long – he hadn’t done anything but sit down, pour tea and… _No_ , he couldn’t have taken a drink of it. It wasn’t real.

None of it was real.

Except the time. It was definitely gone, between his phone and the setting sun, he can’t argue with the time.

_KNOCK_.

Hux feels his stomach tighten into a rock, slowly opening his eyes and staring down at his knees.

_Knock._

_Knock. **Crack.**_

Hux tightens hand into a fist as the banging continues, taking a few deep breaths and staying still, waiting for the noise to disappear to the next level. He peeks slightly to the doorway when it’s silent for almost a minute, then looks back to the sea when the noise starts up rapid and quick, but… still from the same distance. He shakes his head slightly, gripping his hand around his phone and tempted to open the camera, but if it turns out to be nothing he’ll just feel more a fool.

The noise gets louder as he inches further forward, following it slowly until he’s found another narrow hall, prompting him to peek around the corner before rounding it. He blinks at the sight of an open door to the back garden, and straightens with a short step forward, confused and thankful all at once. He watches it swing open slow and drags his teeth sharp over his lip. It is probably only the wind, air whipping the door back and forth into the jamb, but if nothing else it could become another broken door if not closed proper. He walks over hesitantly, embarrassed at himself for the wariness when he reaches for the handle, then catches with some befuddlement a dark figure out in the sand and making for the sea.

He freezes for a few seconds, hand tightening around the door and convinced it must be a sighting – but much like last night, the figure is _too_ familiar. The anxiety ebbs some at the realization it’s just Ren out for a run, though he hadn’t even told Hux he was awake and it’s certainly an odd time of –

Ren disappears just at the edge of the ocean, dark shadow gone in an instant.

Hux doesn’t realize he’s moving until he nearly trips to his knees in the sand, feet sinking with every heavy step as he runs through the grasses. “Ren! What is – ?” He stumbles to a stop at the edge of the water, finding himself reaching out into nothing and senselessly trying to grab Ren from meters away – how had he gotten out that far so quick? “Ren!”

It takes far too long, the sea drawing him further out, but Ren does finally turn around, hands briefly breaching the surface while his arms go in circles around his body. He’s too far away to see any more than a shadow, but his head tilts, then looks around, and suddenly he’s gone – dark head disappearing beneath the water.

Hux stares in shock, feeling his chest get tight and breath finding no space within his lungs. He takes a hesitant step forward, foot squashing into the sand beneath the gentle lap of the waves. He takes another step, feeling the water sweep against an ankle, the next bringing it up to his knees, and realizes he can’t go any further – what could he do? He can’t bloody swim.

“Ren!?” Hux calls, startling when a particularly strong wave laps up to his thigh, pushing him back and then forward within, as if testing him. He swallows tightly, his next words barely audible to his own ears. “Ren – I can’t…”

A dark shape coalesces suddenly, approaching quick and prompting him to start a faltering retreat backward, and nearly causing him to fall into the ocean himself. He takes a stuttering breath, instinct driving him to put his arms out when the shape rises with the next wave, and –

Ren stumbles out of the ocean, both hands immediately wrapping around his own shoulders, clumsily rubbing up and down against his arms. He pitches forward unsteadily, hitting Hux with little grace and nearly knocking the both of them over onto the sand.

“Shit,” Ren groans, his nose like ice where it digs in Hux’s neck.

Hux grits his teeth, letting Ren press in cold and wet, plastering to him from forehead to ankles. He doesn’t think about why or indulge the impulse to wrap his arms around tight, and only hesitantly sets a hand atop Ren’s with a grimace at the clamminess of the skin under his palm. He opens his mouth once he’s sure his voice won’t shake. “Why the hell did you jump in the sea?”

Ren shakes his head for a few seconds, then gives a disquieting laugh. “Seemed like a good idea?”

“Come on,” Hux says, taking a step back and refusing to feel guilty for the full-body shudder that goes through Ren. He wraps a hand around Ren’s wrist, pulling slightly and turning toward the house, trying to replace the uneasiness at the back of his mind with the urgency to keep Ren from catching a chill.

The inside of the house seems colder than it had only minutes ago, and Hux finds himself checking windows they pass just to make sure they’ve not somehow gotten open. He pauses halfway up the stairs, feeling a particular déjà vu on the landing from the ground to the first floor, and looks back down to Ren with a nervous bite at the edge of his lips. He gets caught on the soft expression across Ren’s face; he looks so calm, with his breath having evened out and eyes staring out the tall window past Hux.

“Do you need a shower?” Hux asks, gesturing with his chin up the rest of the steps, toward the bathroom a few meters away. “Or just a towel.”

“A towel,” Ren says, taking a deep breath and reaching up to muss his own sopping hair.

The movement pulls slightly, and Hux glances down with a blink, hastily dropping Ren’s other hand and ignoring the heat that surges to his cheeks. He hadn’t noticed their fingers getting caught together. “Go sit in the parlor.”

Ren rolls his eyes, backing down the steps with a low grumble. “Whatever.”

Hux shakes his head, biting back the one or six things he could say about Ren getting himself in this situation. He passes his room, then pauses, backtracking on a whim and clumsily kicking off his trainers and stripping away the jeans that have become cold and miserably stuck to his legs. He nearly falls through the window, but manages to right himself, stumbling into warm flannel and immediately thankful.

He ducks into the bathroom, hastily throwing his sopping jeans over the curtain rod, then reaches over to grab both the remaining towels off the rack, finding them fluffy and comforting when he folds them over his arm. He heads back down the steps in a similar hurry, only to flinch back when the first stair creaks and flexes under his foot, driving him back up to the first floor. He stares downward for a beat, then moves forward again and more careful. The sound is loud and echoing, each following stair emitting similar noise, and he wonders how he had missed their fragility in the many times he’d climbed them.

Ren mercifully sits slumped over on the sofa, shivering and looking a fool in his wet clothes. But otherwise _fine_.

“Here,” Hux says, grimacing back when Ren snaps his head up to look. He holds the towels out, letting them slide down his arm to his hand.

Ren grunts shortly, standing up, only to start stripping without warning – clumsily tearing off his shirt and throwing it to the floor with a splat, dragging his jeans off in similar carelessness.

Hux takes a sharp breath, turning around and focusing hard on the darkening wall of dusk over the sea. He swallows when his eyes drift and he realizes he can see Ren perfectly in the reflection, bare of anything except dark briefs, and flinches some when the towels are taken from his arm.

“Cold,” Ren mutters, rubbing the towel hard into his hair.

“Is it?” Hux snaps, turning around and feeling a peculiar ache at the middle of his chest swell and diminish in uncomfortable tandem. “Could it be because it’s bloody October!?”

Ren stares back a few moments, then exhales an unintelligible mutter, shrugging bodily and practically falling backward onto the sofa. He’s going to ruin the damned thing, but it’s no surprise he cares so little about antiques; he doesn’t even care about _himself_.

“What if you had gotten caught up in the waves?” Hux asks, sitting carefully down on the sofa next to Ren, almost touching and tempted to shift in closer – the excuse of possible hypothermia is right there, and even legitimate, but he’s still so angry that Ren went out there at all. He hasn’t felt so helpless in years. “I couldn’t even get – I can’t swim, Ren. I guess I should’ve said before we came out here.”

“I could teach you,” Ren says, strangely confident, though it’s tempered some by the clumsy straightening of a towel around his shoulders. He looks utterly dreary: his hair lank with drying saltwater and visible skin still tinged a worrying blue.

“I’m sure,” Hux mutters, trying to imagine it for a few seconds, only to find it impossible. The idea of taking direction from Ren is just too absurd – especially right now.

“Don’t be a dick, I’m a – ” Ren stops on an abrupt breath, clearing his throat in a needlessly forceful manner, almost choking, before he goes absolutely silent. He continues in a lower voice, a beat too late not to be dodgy. “I was a pro. Almost went to London.”

“London? What would – wait.” Hux looks over only to catch a grimace deepening across Ren’s mouth, and glances back down, dragging his teeth slow over his lower lip. He certainly regrets being tactful when Ren got somber in the pool house, feeling a fool for thinking it had to do with family he had never even met. “The _Olympics_?”

“Yeah,” Ren sighs, one hand reaching down to pluck at the seam of the cushion between them; his fingers are warm, knuckles nudging up against Hux’s leg. “But I fucked up and fired my… my _coach_ right before training camp.”

Hux peeks back up, tracking carefully across Ren’s sullen face. “Ah.”

“Then the next one tried to give me steroids,” Ren says, his head tilting and gaze firmly fixed on the other end of the sofa. He takes a shaky breath, nervously pressing his lips together and eyes blinking rapidly, then shakes his head. “So I got the message. I quit. I failed to carry on the family legacy before I even knew it was mine.”

Hux glances away before he can get drawn any further into Ren’s wavering expression. He’s been living next to Ren long enough to understand that he had to have done more than just quit. “How old were you?”

“Seventeen,” Ren says, shifting suddenly and nearly elbowing Hux hard in the thigh. He starts to slump downward, legs kicking out over the opposing armrest until he’s laying down across the sofa, wrapping the towels around him like blankets and neatly shoving his face into the back cushion with the crown of his head at Hux’s hip. “My cousin is a diver – she’s probably going to Tokyo.”

“That’s…” Hux pauses, fairly sure he’s not meant to give congratulations, though certain he’s neither supposed to be outright negative. “Something.”

“I mean, whatever,” Ren says, his resentment strong enough to sour the room. He scoffs loudly, curling his arms over his face and making his growling words almost indecipherable. “She’s fucking tiny; of course, she’s not going to splash.”

“Right,” Hux agrees slowly, finding himself caught on a similar thread of thought, if with rather the opposite application. “Were you this big at seventeen, then?”

“Shut up,” Ren mutters, one arm lifting aggressively from the sofa and nearly hitting Hux in the shoulder. He curls his hand into a fist and folds it back into his front, voice muffling again when he turns back to sulk once more in the cushions. “I didn’t realize I could get bigger on my own. I was stupid; I nearly took Snoke’s goddamn drugs.”

“Snoke?” Hux repeats blankly, a recent headline flickering through his mind. It can’t be _that_ Snoke, surely, “Not the one that – ”

Ren barely grunts, but it’s an undeniable affirmative.  

“Good lord,” Hux mutters, easily recalling various details from complainants; the articles had been the sort he avoided after a while, finding too much familiarity in the stories.

“I like writing, though.” Ren turns over onto his back, settling his head on Hux’s thigh with strangely little hesitancy and peeking upward, catching his eye with a narrow look. He clumsily frees a hand from the towel to gesture upward with a pointed finger, now almost sneering, “And I’m fucking good at it. That internship you threw in my face wants to _hire_ me.”

“Do they?” Hux tuts shortly, lifting his head with a hum and glancing out the window. It seems less ominous now, merely dark. “That is a shock.”

“Did you really like that Knight Terrors story?” Ren says, thoughtful as if the change in subject isn’t an absolute non sequitur. “The one you were playing in the car.”

Hux doesn’t answer for a few seconds, trying to find sarcasm in the question, but the tone hadn’t even been particularly unkind. “Are you going to try again to convince me otherwise?”

“No,” Ren mutters, hesitating for a conspicuous length of time, and his voice when he chooses to continue is peculiarly tight, almost self-conscious. “What did you like about it?”

“In that story in particular?” Hux asks, staring harder into the sea and trying not to feel too put on the spot. “Or the author?’

“Yeah, the – ” Ren pauses, head angling back on Hux’s thigh, digging hard into the muscle and a little painful. “What do you mean the _author_?”

“I would recommend most of their stories,” Hux admits, glancing down to catch Ren’s eyes, finding bemusement where he’d expected mocking; the conversation in the car had been outright derogatory. “You should give them more credit, as a professional.”

“He’s not a professional,” Ren disagrees, though his expression remains unsure rather than turning to arrogance, and he bites at the inside of his lip. “I’m not a –  It’s _Reddit_.”

Hux grudgingly allows that with a short tip of his head; despite all his musings, he can’t be sure the author isn’t a cab driver or a bin man, but they’re still very good. “Talented regardless, though could use a bit of post-production – sometimes traffic is in the background, or builders.”

“Maybe impacts,” Ren says, his voice low, reaching up and gesturing at the ceiling with a flat hand.

Hux blinks, trying to make sense of the suggestion. “Impacts?”

“Because he records on his bed,” Ren continues, his voice rising into an off-putting pitch, punctuating with a single, startling bark of laughter. “Which is right next to a wall. Since he doesn’t have a lot of room to put the box. And sometimes a guy hits the wall at like the worst time.”

Hux feels his expression twist in disbelief, staring down at Ren for a few seconds and taking in the raised eyebrows and pinched mouth. “ _What_.”

“Just saying,” Ren says with a hum and a glance away; the act absurd with his position literally in Hux’s lap. “Maybe.”

Hux runs his teeth over the top of his lip, then bites down hard at the inside. He wants to accuse Ren of lying, though he can’t think of any motivation for it. But he would’ve _noticed_. He’s literally speaking to Ren right now, and he doesn’t sound… He’s got a different voice. “Are you claiming to be – ”

“You don’t know his name?” Ren interrupts, his eyes catching at Hux’s again, hesitancy replaced with something more accusatory.

Hux stares back for a few seconds, trying to recall anything – even a syllable – only to realize he’s somehow ignored that detail for over a year. “I know his voice.”

“Debatable,” Ren mutters, lower lip sucking up against his teeth as if he’s actually going to start pouting.

Hux rolls his eyes and reaches out for his phone, dislodging Ren some while he digs it out from the deep pocket of his flannels. He sends a narrow glare downward before unlocking the screen, debating on the quickest way to find this all-important name, and settles on the subreddit after he remembers that he saved it just yesterday.

The answer he gets is rather the opposite of what he’d hoped, and his thumb hovers over the screenname _u/Kylo_Ren_ that sits there at the top of the post, in soft gray against black, though it may as well be a glaring red. Hux takes a short breath and scrolls down just to be sure, reading the first few lines, then clicks the screen closed with his finger. He feels like an utter moron, and for more than just the one reason. “It’s your license plate.”

“No shit,” Ren mutters, his tone entirely too patronizing. “And my _name_.”

Hux takes a sharp breath, tempted drop his phone right onto Ren’s oversize nose.

Ren mercifully rolls away seconds later, sitting back up on the sofa and elbowing Hux in the side when he resettles the towel over his shoulders. It’s impossible to know if it was meant vindictively, but knowing Ren, the likelihood is high.

Hux looks away from him, out again toward the ocean, only to find it’s gotten so dark the only thing he can see is the sour pair they make in the reflection. He reaches up to pinch across the bridge of his nose, feeling an anxious headache forming at the unpleasant thought that he’s been mocked the last few days. _But_ every conversation they’ve had about podcasts thus far has begun with Starkiller, and the things Ren keeps saying about it; complimentary and respectful, not to mention unwittingly helping with the plot.

He stands up before he can convince himself not to, nervously running a hand through his hair. He’s certainly got no reason anymore to keep quiet until tomorrow, and everything he needs to prove it is just a floor away.

Ren gets up to follow, but Hux shoves him back, trying to get him to stay on the sofa. “Hux, it’s not like – ” he cuts himself off with one of those awful half-shouts once Hux is in the hall.

“Stay there!” Hux snaps, climbing the stairs and quickly moving toward his room.

He takes his bag and dumps out his laptop, grabbing it up and heading back down careful of the creaks, taking deep breaths while trying to convince himself that this is all completely _fine_. He only lied for… too long, really, but he didn’t base any of his characters on Ren, at least, which would…

He pauses on his toes just outside the entry to the parlor, hugging his laptop to his chest and trying ineffectively to calm his heart when it starts to beat up against his ribs. He stares at the ground, his eyes going wide, and looks backward at the entryway door, a momentary idea of flight flickering through his mind before sense reminds him he’s in the middle of bloody nowhere.

Phasma is going to be insufferable.

The worst part of it is that the story hadn’t even been _subtle_. Hux had tried so hard to rationalize the similarities – forgetting the only neighbor he spoke to, who knew his stodgy attitudes, who would be _capable_ of wrapping all that into compelling prose; the one who apparently wrote self-inserts to sacrifice himself in noble effigy to the pretty boy with the vicious smile, or… whatever the wording had been, two parts complimentary to one part derisive.

A dark shadow eclipses the doorway, prompting Hux to look up with a start as the past night flickers through his mind, only it’s just Ren again, shuffling forward with slumped shoulders and a tremulous mouth.

Ren remains silent for a few seconds, then glances down to the computer. “Are you that pissed?”

“By the American definition, some,” Hux admits, swallowing thickly, and absolutely certain his face is starting to get awful and ruddy. “But I try not to be a hypocrite.”

“…Hypocrite?” Ren repeats blankly, taking a step back on stumbling feet when Hux moves forward toward him, his eyes losing their flinty edge and blinking in confusion. He stays standing when Hux sits on the sofa, keeping back at arm’s length. “I’m not going to delete it.”

Hux shakes his head, typing in his password and waiting a few seconds for it to load, then going for the file viewer with a slow exhale. He could just _open_ Audacity, let it play the new episode, but the idea sets a skitter of nerves up his spine, so he just turns the screen around on his lap. Hopefully, the various filenames will speak for themselves without inviting any sort of critique.

Ren stares at the screen hard, breathing for a few seconds, then gestures if at a loss over his own head. He drops the hand again over his eyes, then drags it down his face and across his mouth to cradle his own neck. “I knew something was weird when you called it Starkiller.”

Hux waits for more, only to sit through another ten seconds of Ren staring intensely down at him. “Starkiller?”

“The podcast hasn’t said what SK stood for,” Ren says, reaching down with his other hand and sliding his finger along the lid of the laptop, lips rolling nervously against his teeth. “Like at all.”

Hux blinks, briefly trying to run through every word of the first season in his head, only to find nothing but difficulty arguing. He looks down at the spread of newer files, and is also fairly certain he hasn’t said it in any of the them. “I will admit I… haven’t thought much of it.”

Ren has the gall to look disappointed, “Oh.”

“Yes, well,” Hux says, closing the screen slowly, only to regret it when that leaves very little to serve as a barrier. He clears his throat, tapping his fingers along the edges, and ignores the first urge to hug the computer up near his chest like armor.

Ren breathes quietly for a few seconds, then steps sideways, only to backtrack somewhat clumsily on his foot, dropping back into the sofa at his spot. He slumps into himself, curling forward and arms folded tight around his chest; he looks more pathetic than he might normally fully clothed, hair still lank and damp around his shoulders, though that clashes some with the prominent muscle tensing under his skin with every new mutter.

Hux looks away from him and glances at the computer still in his hands, settling on a very stupid direction. He waits another moment before he puts it down, tucking it neatly under the sofa, so it doesn’t get destroyed should this go very bad.

“I heard you speaking to your uncle,” Hux says, speaking quickly, but trying to keep his voice steady, “And now with this, I – I think you should – ”

Ren goes to shove up from the sofa, a simultaneously absurd and awful noise coming from his mouth that is definitely some protest to the conversation.

Hux reaches out to grab at Ren’s shoulder, but he’s too slow, and ends up instead scrambling to step in front of him. It leaves them both standing just in front of the sofa, and he drops his hands from where they’d been hovering, nails digging into his palms as he curls both into fists. “You should have said something to _me_. Not the Internet, not your _uncle_ – me.”

Ren turns his head, looking from the left side of the floor to the right, lips pressed together hard enough to blanch. He closes his eyes a second later, then drops his head further, which might loosely be translated to a nod, if one was in the mood to take that as an answer.

Hux stares for a few seconds, feeling a void gnaw at the inside of his chest with every next heartbeat. He warily lifts a hand, pressing his palm to the side of Ren’s arm, and takes a sharp breath when that gets answered with a sudden lift of Ren’s head, dark eyes boring into his own. He finds himself glancing down, watching Ren’s lips relax, rosy color bursting back across them in a far-too fascinating manner.

He reaches up just as Ren moves, wrapping a hand around the towel to pull him in, and panicking for a brief moment he’s interpreted it all wrong until those flushed lips press hard against his own. He tilts his head at the jarring knock against his nose, consequently feeling Ren’s dig into his cheek when they press closer, and thinks absently that it’s certainly not cold now.

He curls his other hand at Ren’s side, opening his mouth as every reluctance he’s had all weekend dissolves into the ether. He can rationalize the why-nots in a few minutes; right now, it’s all sensation: the hands clutching at his back, the soft slick noises every time they shift against each other, the heady scent of artificial pine and saltwater.

Hux pushes slightly, mostly expecting Ren to push back, only to grunt in surprise when instead a pair of large hands wrap around his waist, pulling him down onto the sofa. He groans into Ren’s mouth as they settle with an ungainly stumble, balancing himself and squeezing at Ren’s bare arms with both hands, his hips pressing forward on desperate impulse for contact. He bites down slightly, thinking to pull away for a breath, but the following whimper goes to his head, urging him to suffocate rather than leave the succor of Ren’s mouth. He regrets it moments later, as if he’s somehow lost some battle of wills, when he hears his own whine as Ren pushes him away, those swollen lips pressing apologetically to his neck.

“I can’t believe…” Ren pants, wetting his lips with distracting swipes of his tongue, then giving a disarming twist at the corner of his mouth. “And after I got over you with prose.”

“Is that what that was?” Hux asks, drawing his fingers down the ridge of Ren’s collarbone, distracted now with everything he’s only ever had chance to stare at when they passed in the halls. His sense of decorum has completely left him, which is just as well now that he’s sitting in Ren’s lap. “You brought me back in that story. To _eat_ you.”

“Fuck off,” Ren groans, covering his face and abruptly shifting away, folding both arms over his eyes while he leans back into the sofa. He doesn’t shove Hux away exactly, but it almost seems like he is trying to back off. “It’s so fucking mortifying you heard that at all.”

Hux stares at him for a few seconds, rolling his lips together to try and keep the aftertaste from completely fading away. He lets Ren sit there a moment, then swallows, feeling his nerves threaten to reemerge. “Ren?”

“Sorry,” Ren says, dropping his arms, though his eyes remain difficult to catch. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“It’s a good story,” Hux says, leaning back on Ren’s thighs and failing not to feel disappointed by the sudden direction into conversation. He takes a shallow breath, continuing only with hope that he’ll be heard as preoccupied. “I enjoyed it, even if it… It was probably a little bit of egotism. Though I would disagree on calling me _fey_ -like.”

“What? No, not that,” Ren says, gesturing at their current position with an outstretched hand, which is rather the opposite of what it should be doing right now. “ _This_ – I’m not… I don’t just want to hook up. And you basically said you weren’t interested.”

Hux blinks back, feeling his expression fold into a scowl. “What?”

“You said there was nothing to worry about, like two hours ago!” Ren says, his voice raising, but expression going a little shamed around the edges and head dropping to his chest with clear attempt to hide it. It’s rather a comfort to see him flustered after that bizarre accusation. “Literally what you _said_. You’re not interested in me.”

“Good Lord,” Hux mutters, rolling his eyes and glancing backward to the shapes of their reflections, finding his own face for a beat of narcissistic consolation. He looks back, shoving at Ren’s broad shoulder. “I meant that as in: there’s nothing to fuck up, so _go for it_.”

Ren looks up through his lashes, as if bashful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Hux mocks, dropping his hand further down the length of Ren’s chest, finding his hand just barely able to span a single pectoral. He wets his lips, exhaling a conceding breath, “Though, in the spirit of honesty, even if I had a partner, there… probably wouldn’t be much to worry about in the same manner.”

Ren outright frowns, leaning up into Hux’s face with evident goal to be quarrelsome despite their positions. “You would cheat on them?”

“Of course not,” Hux says, forcing a scowl across his face, then pinching slightly at the soft skin under his hand. He shifts forward on impulse, as if to prove some point even he doesn’t know, and feels his breath hitch at the distinct shape of a hardening cock up against his own; the hand across his hip tightens with a squeeze. “I would have broken it off after you invited me up. It’s unlikely this imaginary relationship would have been anything serious.”

“Sure,” Ren says, plainly skeptical.

Hux tips his head some, watches his hand tracing along further lines of muscle; it makes it easier to say his next words if he pretends distraction. “It couldn’t have been. Not with you next door,” he admits, keeping his voice quiet, hoping some that it might not even be heard. “I tend to get trapped in my head. And you’ve been… a focus. Even though we hardly speak.”

Ren is silent for a few seconds, then takes a breath, chest expanding under Hux’s hands with a somewhat fascinating tighten of muscle. “You have a crush on me?”

“It’s not a crush,” Hux snaps, looking up sharply and catching Ren’s eyes, feeling a nervous flush flood across his skin.

“Because you don’t like the word,” Ren says slow, far too confident in himself.

“I’m not thirteen, I don’t get _crushes_ ,” Hux says, tilting his head when Ren leans in to kiss soft at his jaw. It’s hardly the most suggestive act, yet heat prickles from that point outward, across his face and straight down to pulse in his hardening cock. “But maybe I’ve fancied you.”

“Do you,” Ren says, pausing for a beat and pressing another kiss further up, closer to Hux’s mouth, “ _Fancy_ me sucking your dick?”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing here?” Hux says, catching Ren’s eye and rolling his hips forward, happy to draw focus southward. In truth, he could hardly care how Ren touches his cock, only that he does, but he’s not going to argue with the chance for that mouth.

Ren leans in again, lips warm and full against Hux’s for an instant, then suddenly both his hands are firm around Hux’s thighs, lifting and shoving him back onto the sofa cushion. He settles with his knees on the floor, hands sliding up and down Hux’s legs. “You look. So good.”

“I don’t –” Hux takes a sharp breath when Ren summarily leans forward, his mouth hot at the front of the thin fabric and _working_ at the prominent shape of his cock underneath. He reaches down, tentatively touching at Ren’s damp hair, burrowing his fingers in between the strands. “Are you aware that I’m in flannel?”

“Yeah,” Ren says, thick fingers already digging at Hux’s waistband, only to abruptly change course and grope upward, palm laying flat and spreading wide against his stomach. He hums, peeking upward and shifty, a smirk curling up at the corner of his mouth. “You should –”

Knock. _Knock Knock! **KNOCK**_!

Hux finds himself trapped, a pair of thick arms wrapping around him at the instant Ren jumps back onto the sofa. The noise had been close, too close to be the door that he’s now uncertain he’d closed, but this had definitely been right against the walls, on either side of them and even behind, each blow echoing into his chest with portentous threat. He doesn’t know how long they wait, minutes or seconds, or longer, but it’s long enough that he feels some return to normality. He can at least turn to look at the entrance without his mind conjuring something waiting there, lingering and lying in wait.

“That was the fastest I’ve lost a hard on,” Ren mutters, his voice right in Hux’s ear, but the words are shaky, teasing left behind for the night.

“I could say the same,” Hux says, still finding some difficulty in catching his breath, though that is only partly to do with the lingering dread. He looks down, where Ren has been squeezing for a good few minutes. “Let up a bit.”

Ren grumbles a complaint under his breath, but his arms loosen some, still tight but no longer holding Hux’s lungs hostage. “ _Sorry_.”

Hux tips his head for a few seconds, trying to settle back into the warmth, calm down further –  but really, does Ren always need to be such an ass? He reaches down before he can talk himself out of it, pinching at Ren’s exposed inner thigh.

“Hux!” Ren yelps, backing off further and covering the area with one hand, jaw dropping in offense. “What the hell?”

“Get up,” Hux says, ignoring the cold and taking the chance to stand. He bites his lip for a long moment, then looks down and kicks at the towel pooled at his feet. “You need clothes.”

Ren is quiet for a few seconds, then stands slowly, swaying slightly on his toes with a mild grunt. His expression has gone evasive again, eyes dropped to the floor and mouth set in a frankly pitiful line. 

Hux sets his jaw, lingering, then leans forward to press a brief kiss to Ren’s pout. “Not here,” he says, tugging at his wrist before turning around, wavering some with each step and hoping Ren doesn’t notice. “Come on.”

He takes a short detour as he steps in the entry, reaching for the switches and pressing at the one for the ceiling, only to hear a now-familiar hollow click. He tries it again, using both fingers to turn on or off, but the entrance remains determinedly dark, lit only by the parlor doorway. He peeks through the small window to the porch, flipping that, but the outside remains dark as well. 

“At least nothing blew up,” Ren says, his head tilting to look up at the fixture.

Hux tries once more, mostly out of stubbornness, then takes a deep breath and drops his hand, making for the stairs and refusing to let his imagination look further into it. The wiring is old, and the hall switches last night were exactly the same; it’s not a hallucination or a nightmare, not knocking or frozen windows, just a loathsome coincidence in ancient infrastructure. The parlor gives more than enough light to go by until they get to the next level. 

“Oh, I get it,” Ren says, a shaky attempt at humor when his foot steps heavy on the first stair, a prominent creak echoing across the entrance. “You set that all up – trying to get me upstairs.”

Hux glances backward, grudgingly amused, only to lose any idea of coyness at the sight of a Ren’s shadow. He doesn’t quite understand at first, staring in strained disbelief when it slips off the stairs to go  _against_ the parlor light with shifting stutters of a vaguely human figure; the next instant, it snaps right back, solid and smooth like nothing has happened next to Ren.

“Hux?” Ren says, his voice abnormally faint.

Hux covers his mouth, but he can still hear the gagging underneath, threatening a mess on the stairs. He sinks down against the window, biting his lip and waiting for worst to pass, trying not to think about how wrong he’d been about the shadows. It was real. It was _very_ real. It wasn’t like the hallucinations at all, too erratic where they’d been subtle and dreamlike.

“Hux?” Ren repeats, his hands big on Hux’s shoulders, not quite shaking him, but certainly urgent. “Shit, you’re – Are you going to throw up?”

Hux shakes his head, closing his eyes for a long moment and breathing steadily, counting to ten like he was told by that bloody case worker years ago. He needs to calm down, because if he doesn’t, then he won’t be able to steal Ren’s overpriced car because he’ll have gotten sick all over it.

“Sorry,” Ren says, following Hux to the floor with a dull thunk of his knees into the wood. “I’m so fucking sorry.”

“Why?” Hux rasps, swallowing tightly and regretting it in the next moment; he leans against the wall of the landing and presses his head under the window ledge. If he just sits here, unmoving, then maybe it will keep his stomach settled. “It’s not like you’ve set up some prank.”

“No, but you’re…” Ren pauses, sighing some, his voice lower when he continues, “You’re actually like scared.”

Hux feels his expression twist with humiliation, biting briefly at his lower lip. “It’s not fear.”

Ren actually scoffs back, because _yes_ , he must always be an ass; it’s an appalling shame that Hux must be just as bad to find it endearing.

“Go on,” Hux says, lifting a hand and gesturing, hoping it’s toward the first floor.

Ren does nothing but lean in closer, hand tightening, “What?”

“Get your clothes,” Hux says, turning his head away from Ren’s voice in the place of glaring openly, wary of seeing _that_ again. He should have believed it after everything that happened to himself, but if he apologized now, then Ren would realize it was close. That wouldn’t do any good. “I know you must be cold.”

Ren breathes loud for a few seconds, utterly still, then shifts away, the weight of him leaving Hux’s shoulder. “Fine,” he mutters, a shuffle of feet heard as he stands, followed by a now-familiar creak of the stairs.

Hux opens his eyes just in time to see Ren's back disappear, regret sinking cold into his skin – he’s not really alone, Ren just isn’t visible. He can certainly hear him… _Yes_ , he can hear him. He’s walking at the far end of the hall, his steps creaking some against the old floor; a pause, then another creak. A few seconds later, familiar loud footsteps start up, backtracking down the hall in his direction.

He hates the way his heart starts immediately to thud against his throat, listening to the approaching thuds and certain suddenly that it will have gotten to Ren. The shadow will have swallowed him and now it’s coming for Hux, loud and furious at nothing but its own fate.

“Hux?” Ren asks, taking a step forward into the dim light and revealing himself fully dressed with boots, which simply isn’t fair.

“Yes,” Hux croaks, exhaling hard with relief, setting his head down against his knees. “Still here.”

Ren hurries down the steps in the next moments, then hesitates a beat, before dropping with a thump and shoving in close to Hux’s side. “I can’t find my keys.”

“Your keys?”

Ren doesn’t answer for far too long, though by the haste of his breath it has little to do with him just being difficult. “I know you wanted to stay but I was going to... make you to leave, except. Now my keys are gone.”

Hux closes his eyes, exhaling slow, trying to keep this new layer of panic at bay.

“They weren’t in my pants and they’re not in my room,” Ren gestures loosely, though that seems to be some excuse to clumsily slip that arm around Hux’s back, tucking the hand up against his ribs. He shakes his head at the same moment he shoves that into Hux’s shoulder, muffling his voice, but that doesn’t take away any of the impact of the words. “And honestly, I didn’t actually… I don’t even remember how I got in the water. I just remember the dining room."

“You can’t mean…” Hux drops his head and bites hard at the inside of his lip, trying to control the awful images and what-ifs veering into and filling his thoughts. He had come so close to another one, hadn’t he? If Ren – or whatever it was – hadn’t left the door open… He wouldn’t have known. He’d have just been in that damned parlor, knocking over furniture and waiting for Ren to never wake up.

He may have even taken a walk on the beach eventually, perhaps in the morning, and out there he would have found –

 

"Maybe I was... It could have been sleep-swimming," Ren continues, voice lowering with thought, and probably more than a little self-delusion - sleep _-swimming?_   "Too bad you didn't stop me before the keys got lost. The fob is going to be so dead."

 

The nausea spikes with a vengeance, twice as strong as just moments earlier and forcing his guts into a boil. He goes to cover his mouth again, idly thankful he hadn’t eaten much more than a pastry all day. He rocks forward in reflex, realizing he can’t keep his mouth closed, the sick roiling in his stomach drawing on something tight in his chest, forcing a retch – but rather than vomit spewing to the floor, something worse happens: a sob emerges from his throat, loud and sucking in the quiet.

“Hux?” Ren says, backing up slightly and making it all so much worse with acknowledgment.

“I’m – ” Hux covers his mouth, trying to quiet the next mortifying sob to no avail. He takes a shaky breath, blinking rapidly as his eyes start to spill over, while thoughts he’s spent _years_ keeping back flood to the forefront of his mind. He makes the mistake of glancing to the stairs – a flash of a different room and greying blonde hair, a thin hand reaching up. He forces himself to look at the ceiling, because he can’t think about her now – not ever, but particularly not here. He hates Ren a little, for all it had been an accident to bring up thoughts of other deaths.

“Tillie?”

Hux just gives up and screws his eyes shut at that, realizing he must have been muttering to himself; he loathes this house, bringing back overcome habits and forcing him into the seedy depths of his mind. “Maratelle,” he whispers, though he knows that means next to nothing as well. “Sh-She’s my – was my stepmother.”

Ren takes a sharp breath, quiet for a beat. “Oh.”

“She’s the reason I came here at all, actually,” Hux says, mostly for something to say, trying to get any attention off the state of his face. His hand is shaky when he tries to wipe at the tears, and he shoves that back down across the other, hiding both underneath his bent knees. “New York. I mean. She wanted me to be an engineer.”

“Yeah?” Ren says, shifting closer again, though audibly careful.

“When I was in third year, she gave me this – this Gameboy.” Hux can still remember her face when she’d given it to him, both wary and hopeful, and maybe a little bit of shame, though he hadn’t seen it at the time. “The one that looked a bit like a controller. It was broken, but she told me I could keep it if I fixed it.”

“And you did?”

“I did,” Hux confirms softly, looking over to find Ren’s face in the dim light. He catches him staring back, eyes wide and undeniably sad, and has to look away when he remembers the stupid doll, making him stutter over his words. “I – I fixed it. It felt… It was the most amazing thing. Like I’d done something important.

“She would be so disappointed in me now, though,” Hux mutters, feeling a fissure widen and crack at the center of his chest, any recovery he’s made the past minute or so reverting in an instant. He shouldn’t have admitted he was the one who made that podcast at all, as now Ren will know it, too, “I waste time so much time on that stupid podcast, hours and hours that should be for studies.”

He hates Starkiller sometimes, hates himself more; hates that it feels good to work on it, to write and record and see people enjoying the result. Every word is just another betrayal to her memory.

“It sounds…” Ren pauses, clearing his throat and head shifting back to Hux’s shoulder for a few seconds, just breathing, “It sounds like she gave you stuff so you could be happy, you know? Like,” he trails off, blessedly stuttering into his own indignity. “Sorry, uh, I. I-I don’t know.”

Hux swallows thickly, pressing his tongue momentarily against the backs of his teeth. He doesn’t know why he’s still talking; he managed not to feel or speak about her for over half a decade. “I – I just. I just feel…”

Loss. Like it’s breaking his ribs from the inside. He shakes his head, awkwardly bringing a stiff hand up and pressing hard against his brow, the front of his head aching and tight from the tears. He doesn’t know what he’d have done if he’d lost _Ren_ , too.

“Hux?” Ren says, or to be accurate, squeaks, his hand tightening painfully across Hux’s upper arm.

Hux raises his head with a wet breath to look over at him, only to exhale shakily when a hand proves to be blocking his gaze, pale and thin. He rubs harder to wipe his face, chafing his skin, and though he’s shamed to still feel tears at the edges of his eyes, they don’t quite blur his vision enough to mistake empty space for a small woman.

“I apologize,” she says, her hand icy and weightless when it lays across Hux’s knuckles. “I didn’t mean to make you feel so sad.”

“You didn’t,” Hux rasps, legitimately unsure how he’s managing to speak at all – his mind is scrambling in all directions. The impulse to dive forward down the stairs through the door is strong. But she’s in the way. “I try not to think about it, but it’s – ”

“But it’s always there,” she completes, offering a melancholic hum. “I know.”

Hux swallows tight, teeth biting hard enough into his lower lip to taste iron.

“I still apologize,” she says, “I haven’t had the practice, but I saw that you noticed me. In the nursery. I wasn’t sure how to catch your attention, so I… tried to influence you.” She goes quiet, familiar eyes dropping to the ground for a few seconds. “Do you know who I am?”

“Padme Naberrie,” Hux murmurs, because he recognizes the eccentric hair; the dress from the casefile. And the options are only so many. “You’ve also moved.”

“What.” Ren interjects flatly, but it’s entirely his own fault he hadn’t caught the obvious.

“I have,” Padme admits, then her mouth pinches slightly, as if somehow _she_ has reason to be confused. “Though I had never heard of a psychic who gets sick.”

Hux peeks sideways, catching Ren’s gaze to find a raised eyebrow; if he’s some kind of seer, then so is Ren, and that is far too unlikely a coincidence. “I’m not. One.”

Padme regards him for a moment longer, expression turning opaque, then straightens and gestures for him to do the same. She narrows her eyes at him when he doesn’t, and the sternness there is truly what prompts him to stumble upward. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say to you at first,” she says, pausing for a breath that can only be habit, for all she’d been dead longer than alive, then her hand moves again, lifting to his shoulder with an indistinct squeeze. “But now I know. You _must_ leave. My husband is unwell and has tried repeatedly to impress himself onto your friend. To use him as… as a _surrogate_. You both must go.”

Hux stares in bemusement, then feels his eyes widen, epiphany like a physical blow. “He drank,” he says, glancing down to Ren, remembering last night, before he ran off to bed: he had known where the liquor was, single-minded, and his stumbling afterward. Hux hadn’t noticed then; he’d been too wrapped up in himself. “And swam.”

Padme stares at him for a beat, a shock of frustration crossing her face before it fades back to melancholy. “Yes. He did.”

“The shadow,” Ren says, his voice uncertain but his grip solid as he pulls himself up, using Hux as an uneven balance, then shoving in closer to mutter in his ear. “He’s the _shadows_.”

Hux feels a ludicrous urge to roll his eyes, looking over and feeling a scowl pinch across his mouth. “Yes, I’ve just – ”

“You – your eyes,” Padme interrupts with a gasp, her expression marveling, as if she’s only just seen Ren there, and she removes her hand from Hux to press it just to the edge of Ren’s cheek. “Are you a Naberrie?”

Ren doesn’t seem to know how to react, lips quivering as he opens his mouth, only for no words to follow. He looks to Hux, then down, his disappointment practically written into his forehead.

“He’s your grandson,” Hux says quietly, tired of that look across Ren’s face.

“ _Grandson_?” Padme repeats, lifting her other hand so both ghastly palms settle across Ren’s cheeks, leaning up on toes with her expression parts wondering and skeptical. “How?”

“I don’t know,” Ren says weakly, mood turning and eyes darting quickly to Hux, plainly begging as if there was something to be done about a _ghost_ lacking personal space; he hardly has any room to judge, either, as it has proven rather hereditary. “I think you survived to the hospital?”

“My babies,” Padme says, her voice cracking into a whisper, both hands dropping from Ren and turning into loose fists that curl up and settle over her chest in some muted version of excitement. “They lived?”

Ren runs a shaky hand through his hair, lips rolling together. “My mom is one of them.”

“Leia?” Padme prompts, her voice high and tight.

Ren nods, too quick, visibly biting at his lips. “And Luke.”

“They used my names,” Padme says, an actual smile breaking out across her face, tremulous and thrilled. She is quiet for a few seconds, then lifts her eyes, still curled at the edges with visible joy, but undeniably resolute. “I have changed my mind – we must speak to him. He needs to know.”

A conspicuous silence settles over the landing, air thickening more with stirring thoughts than anything particularly ominous. The mere idea is irrational, downright stupid, inviting the half-gone creature that had very literally just tried to kill Ren into the same room, but dozens of cliché terms are suddenly flooding Hux’s mind: resolution, crossing over _, moving on_.

“Fuck,” Ren says, barely above a whisper.

“Do you…” Hux trails off, glancing to the light from the parlor, only to find it unobstructed. “Know where he is?”

Padme hums a vague affirmative, narrowing her eyes at Hux a moment, then looking again to Ren. She seems reasonably fascinated by him, reaching out like she might touch him again, though she doesn’t follow through and her fingers hover just near his forearm. “What’s your name?”

Ren is quiet for a tense moment. “Ben.”

“Ben,” Padme repeats, her smile fading slightly with an unknown thought, nodding slowly just as she begins to ascend the stairs with disturbingly few steps: a single hand guides her up by the railing. “Anakin’s best friend often went by Ben. He was a good man.”

Ren hums weakly, his head shaking and one hand running though his hair in an awful attempt to hide his expression. He looks scared but also cross, other hand flexing at his side, though his attempts to find some equilibrium are clearly tilting heavy to fear.

Hux reaches down and sweeps a hand up a broad shoulder, tugging some on Ren’s stiff jacket. “You didn’t have her.”

Ren glares upward, then rolls his eyes to the floor, exhaling with an unintelligible mutter before he makes to follow, each heavy step its own declaration of reluctance. His hand hovers over Hux’s back, similar to the night before, but he doesn’t quite grab on, though that’s made up for some the way his oversize boots nearly trod on Hux’s socked heel with every step further into the dark.

“He’s not… quite in one place, little bits staying in corners and spreading him thin,” Padme says, lingering at the second floor landing, somehow already lit by yellowing light, and her being flickers worryingly as she stares upward at the next hall. She starts to ascend again once they’re all together, continuing with a short shake of her head. “His turmoil… _anger_. I thought it might fade, after he accepted the injury. But instead it built and built, swelling inside of him.”

“Did you really never suspect?” Ren asks, his head solidly bent when Hux turns to look at him.

“Not like this, not so selfish,” Padme whispers, expression struggling with that forced calm; the clawing grip at the bannister betrays her own leftover rage, a faint but conspicuous echo of noise drifts through the plaster. She relaxes a few seconds later, eyes sweeping straight past Hux and only for Ren. “Don’t let it catch you.”

“I won’t, I’m…” Ren trails off, chewing on his lips and head tilting, eyes flickering between blinks to Hux. He exhales hard, looking back to Padme and speaking now in a lower tone. “Okay, mostly. Therapy and stuff.”

Padme gives an ambient sort of hum, filling the hall and practically from the walls itself. “Perhaps it will not break you.”

The master is just as it was the night before, cold and gloomy with ice on the windows, the bedclothes turned down and nightgown gone. Hux swallows hard and glances across the walls, down the carpet, but nothing stands out like Ren’s earlier shadow, unnaturally shifting one way or the other to the lights of the room.

Ren gives an odd noise, prompting Hux to turn and look at him. He’s in the same place he was last night, hovering in the doorway, though he stumbles forward when Padme goes to follow him in through the jamb. His next exhale is blustering, loud and uneven, his eyes catching as his lips press together into a blanched line, though he doesn’t turn to run.

“Oh, Anakin,” Padme says, her footsteps quick and silent as she approaches the foot of the bed, a single hand reaching outward and palm up. “Can you hear me?”

Hux feels his eyes widen, stepping backward and into Ren when the dark of one of the windows shifts, revealing the ice underneath isn’t quite so dark. He looks backward for a moment, but Ren hardly seems shocked, his eyes more filled with  worry and mouth moving in the uneven shapes of unspoken words.

The shadow is trembling when Hux looks to it again, uncertain of its edges and shifting nebulously, until a figure slowly forms against the window; the shape of a head and arms undeniably human. It retreats from the glass an instant later, losing its resemblance to a person as it slips along a wall, then down across the floor, perhaps a man one moment and a splotch another; a Rorschach against every surface.

The lights in the room flicker briefly into a void, so dark, if just for an instant, that Hux feels lost despite not having moved a step. He swallows hard, blinking rapidly like that might shake the lingering sense of isolation, but it certainly only makes it far worse.

“Hux,” Ren rasps, his hand a shock of contact as big fingers thread through Hux’s with the clear goal to take them down the hall. It’s an admirable plan, if not for the odd shape of the room, leading him to make the most dreadful, hollow noise when he realizes he’s backed them into the sitting area rather than to freedom. “No, no _no_. Hux, please, I can’t – ”

Hux panics some himself, hesitating at leading them himself, because that would require moving forward. He can’t move _forward_.

“Anakin,” Padme says, calmly first, then voice rising into an unnatural, piercing shriek. “ _Anakin_!”

The tone seems to have an odd effect on the shadow, jerking it back like a physical grip.

Hux takes the risk of glancing down, the grasp on his hand so tight he feels like he must have broken bones from the strong fingers digging into the spaces between his knuckles. He tugs his arm, pulling back, until Ren’s stumbles forward and presses to his side, palpably shuddering against him.

“They’ll be gone soon,” Hux whispers, though he’s not sure of it – he can’t be, can only grasp at the slim chance. He can hardly keep Ren from ever coming back here after tonight, risking himself to this _thing_ , so he must hold onto it. “You can make the rest of the house like the kitchen.”

Ren doesn’t respond past a pair of breaths.  

“If not,” Hux continues weakly, taking a risk to look over at Ren’s expression, feeling something at the center of him shrivel at the fear deep in Ren’s wide eyes. “We’ll find a cat.”

Ren manages to muster a laugh, though it sounds halfway to a choke. “That was so fucked up.”

“Yes,” Hux agrees, glancing now from the corner of his eye to the ghastly pair speaking low to each other. He wonders how unreasonable it would be to walk away, drag Ren downstairs and sit until the house somehow feels less suffocating, free of its menaces. “My cat was dug up from the garden as well. That’s where I got the idea.”

“Jesus,” Ren mutters, the shudders strengthening for a few seconds, now likely with added disgust.

“Not quite,” Hux says, tilting his head slightly to tap against Ren’s temple. “It’s hardly the – ”

“I’m sorry!” Anakin shouts, his voice hoarse, drawing back focus to the awful, impossible situation. “I’m so sorry, Padme.”

“I can’t forgive you, Anakin,” Padme says, her voice lifting as well, expression twisted with misery. “You know I can’t.”

The lights flicker again, dimming then dropping everything into the dark, but Hux just tightens his grip on Ren’s hand; it’s better this round, concentrating on the solidness against his side, a point of warmth in the icy room. He’s still lost for those moments, but not alone, and that makes every difference.

“But what’s been done is _done_. I’ve spent so long trying to get you to see that – ”

“I tried to – ” Anakin screams to himself in frustration, the light seeping back into the room as aberrant shadow shifts into the corners. “I keep trying to go, but I – I can’t get away.”

“I know, Ani,” Padme says, her shoulders falling and voice nearly cracking, “You almost took our grandson away this time.”

The shadow collapses further, only a line against the moulding, then spreads again, closer to Padme with presumed hesitance. “Our what?”

“Our _grandson_ ,” Padme repeats, pausing for a few seconds, then lifting her chin with a severe gesture out toward the sea. “You almost took him out there, Anakin. You’ve already swam so far that it took _days_ for you to find your way back, and now you tried to curse him to the same wretched fate. Our children did _not_ survive to repeat your mistakes.”

“But I need to – ”

“Anakin!” Padme says, loud and stern, taking another step and crowding the shadow toward the window with both hands in fists at her sides. “The only thing keeping us here is our own stubbornness, you have to see that,” she sends another glance backward, her expression going soft before she looks back to Anakin. “But it’s their house now.”

Hux blinks in bemusement, then feels an ill-timed heat bloom against his jaw. He glances sidelong to Ren, but it seems that the slip-up went unnoticed by him.

“Will you come with me?” Anakin asks, his voice small, the shape of him shrinking against the moulding to match the tone.

Padme is quiet for a tense beat, then nods slowly, holding out her small hand. “As far as I can.”

The form that lifts is more tentacle than arm, until the uncertain shape of a man seems to form around it, limb hovering over the top of Padme’s hand for seconds. Then finally, it drops.

Hux stares in the subsequent moments, wondering if something happened between blinks, though he’s rather certain he hadn’t done anything of the sort. He glances quickly across the room, wary of moving his head, but even the ice is fading, warmth seeping back into his skin.

“Fuck,” Ren breathes after a while, squeezing Hux’s already-sore fingers. “Where did they go?’

Hux tilts his head at the empty space for a few seconds, then hums, glancing to Ren from the corner of his eye. “I haven’t the slightest idea.”

“Do you think they’re still in the house?” Ren asks, his voice low and hurried, almost as if wary of being answered by _them_.

“No,” Hux says, only to grimace, immediately regretful for sounding so certain. He hardly has experience with this sort of thing, but it certainly _seemed_ like a settling of souls. “I don’t think. Not unless that was a very untimely trick.”

Ren groans under his breath, pulling Hux along when he slumps down onto the loveseat. He opens his hand some, relaxing his grip, and uses his other to rub at Hux’s fingers; evidently, he’s not been completely unaware of the discomfort. “Do you think my dead grandmother stopped me from sucking you off?”

Hux watches Ren with his fingers, flexing them some when Ren pokes at the center of his palm. “We can’t really know,” he says, looking up to catch Ren’s eyes and raising one of his brows, fairly certain recent events have made it impossible for his expression to be anything but grim. “It may have been your grandfather.”

Ren stares back for a beat, then his eyes narrow, and he lets go of Hux’s hand completely to slump into the back of the chair. “I’m going to pass out.”

* * *

The manor looks far too normal in the dawn light, much to Hux’s disappointment. He peeks into each of the rooms, half curious and more than wary, finally managing to take some pictures, though doesn’t find any convincing proof of the night. He can’t even find the damned doll, with its sad eyes and eerie frown; it’s like it disappeared into the ether with its ghastly soul. He does, thankfully, find the keys in the lounge, sharp under his heel next to the chaise, and shakes his head slightly while he pockets them. He does get more anxious when the manor proves itself empty, but he eventually peeks out a window, finding a dark shape out on the sand and safely seated on a dune. 

Ren turns when Hux gets closer, bearing an expression that visibly brightens from grim to pleased; it proves difficult to tell if it’s a façade.

“What are you doing?” Hux asks, walking up to stand beside him. He startles some when Ren responds with a lean sideways and into his leg, exhaling a heavy, warm sigh into the fabric of his jeans. He hesitates a moment before reaching down to press his palm to the crown of Ren’s head, curling his fingers into thick hair. Dry. He must have been out here a while.

“Fuck,” Ren says, voice muffled and practically percussive against Hux’s thigh.

Hux nods slowly, looking up and out toward the ocean. It’s rougher this morning, with the cool wind lancing through his thin jumper a likely culprit.

“Have you ever… gone to her grave,” Ren asks, somewhat meek, “To talk or anything?”

Hux stays quiet a few seconds, debating if he should fake confusion, then takes a short breath, reaching up to straighten wind blown hair across his forehead. “I can’t even be sure where it is.”

“We should find it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for this being late! I kept adding onto it and now I've just drawn it out, but like I didn't want to leave any big questions.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to make the name sort of a pun ? ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> I can be found on the [twitters](https://twitter.com/ezlebe?lang=en) and lesser so on [ tumblr](http://ezlebe.tumblr.com) at Ezlebe


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